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Dear Cookie,
You wrote: "By the way, your book project sounds
interesting. I sort of figured over the years that if half of the 29.000 Bf109
fighters built were lost in ground accidents the Germans couldn't all be ace
pilots!"
Not every German pilot was an ace, as can be
ascertained by the losses that was suffered on the Western Front after 1943. But
if every aces' claims in every air force were shrunk by 200 to 300%, as
would be an accurate count of actual events, there still exists the glaring fact
that there were certain Luftwaffe Experten who were that much better
than all the rest.
The German scores were also in line with some sort
of reality when it is well documented that these pilots flew as many as ten
to fifteen missions per day and never ventured much over the front lines.
If they were shot down, they often were able to recover over or
behind their own lines.
In my forthcoming book I relate about a
VVS strike during the early morning hours of 29 May
were to be against Roman where 2./NAGr.14 (Bf-109G-4, -6, -8),
Maj. Johann Bollner’s NSGr.5 (Go-145, Ju-87D-5, Ar-66),
NSGr.6, 10.(Pz)/SG.3, Bruno Meyer’s IV.(Pz)/SG.9, and
IV./JG.54 were all based variously in and around. Tasked with the planned
4:40 AM fighter sweeps against Roman were the La-5FN
and Yak fighters of Gen.-m-r. I.D. Podgorniy’s 4th Gv.IAK. Based
on the early hours specified for this attack against Roman it was planned to
catch the night harassing aircraft and tank killers of these just mentioned
Luftwaffe units.
Though there were
numerous strikes reported against the different Luftwaffe aircraft during
the fighter sweep of the 294th IAD, by the time of the arrival of the
first wave of the 2nd Gv.ShAK there were numerous reports from the Il-2
pilots of Bf-109s, Fw-190s, and Ju-87s that were scurrying everywhere in
attempts to take off during the actual attacks.
And it was during the confusion generated with the four Bf-109G-6s that had waded into the Soviet ground-attack formation, fuel storage facilities and bomb explosions going off, and the German anti-aircraft fire filling the skies above the airfield, that all aided in the grossly exaggerated claims made by the 5th VA pilots. As with any aerial assault against a target, the after-action reports must be very carefully scrutinized to arrive at an accurate assessment of the actual damage inflicted during the mission. The official records of 30 May for the 5th VA claims the destruction of many more aircraft than the similar Luftwaffe unit’s daily serviceability records support. The efforts of this 5th VA raid against Husi state that ". . . with some ease the war defenses at Iassy (Husi) were exasperated . . (with the confirmed) shooting down of 36 enemy aircraft specifically: (and with) 106 machines destroyed for one day!" Some Russian historians seem to have drawn a slightly distorted conclusions from the combat records of the 5th VA on this raid and the daily loss records of the Oberkommando der Luftwaffe (OKL, High Command German Air Force) for this same time period. As Obst. Krause was quoted above stating that they were losing as many aircraft as the number of tanks that they destroyed. And that: ". . . hardly a cost-effective employment of aircraft." Many of the 5th VA claimed ". . . 106 machines destroyed for one day!", were in actuality just combat attrition losses due to other factors than being victims to the efforts of the Gvardeyskiy pulkiy, though these were a growing factor to always consider in combat. Taking into account the proven formula for combat overestimation among all countries’ pilots during combat operations of three times the actual amount, and with close examination of the Luftwaffe unit’s daily serviceability records, a fairly accurate figure can be arrived at. Actual Luftwaffe records would support 5th VA victory claims of about twelve aircraft shot down in the Husi and Sobani area, with thirty-five being a daily total loss for the entire Iassy - Roman - Husi - Sobani area. Though the 5th VA raid was not as complete a success as initially hoped for, and the Luftwaffe had been stung by this specific series of raids, the fangs of the Jagdverbande and the Schlachtflugzeug were still intact, quite sharp, and just as dangerous as ever. And, even if the full combat claims of the 5th VA are taken as fact, the Soviets themselves admitted that the Schwerepunktbilde stayed with the Luftwaffe. The Soviet Vozduchnogo Nabludeniya, Opovesheniya, Sviatzy (VNOS, Air Observation, Information and Communication Service) signals and communications network at the Vinosnoi Punkt Upravlenii-VVS (VPU, extension control post) back at Uman reported that the Luftwaffe flew 1547 sorties during this time period, while the VVS was only able to perform 888. And, it was from these increased sorties that the Luftwaffe was able to continue to secure the Schwerepunktbilde so much so that Gen.-m-r. A.V. Utin, the 7th IAK commander, stated that the ". . . build-up (was) threatened from every quarter." As stated above, only four Bf-109s were able to significantly disrupt this particular aerial operation when used effectively. Rather than try and blunt the initial high-speed fighter sweep against Roman was to be performed with an udaloy force of 60 Yakovlev fighters from Plk. Ivan Adreyevich Taranenko’s 294th IAD, who himself led the initial attack. Among these strike aircraft were those of Plk. Mikhail Vasilyevich Avdeyev’s (GSS) 6th Gv.IAP-YeF (Yernomorsgogo Flota, Black-Sea Fleet), which included both Yak-1b and Yak-9D fighters. This unit had twenty-two pilots with the "Gold Star" of the GSS. And, one of this unit’s Eskadriliy (Esk., Squadron) commanders was St.L-y. Mikhail Ivanovich Grib (GSS), who himself flew his own personally marked Yak-1b and Yak-9D. The supporting top-cover Bf-109s simply waited until the initial fighter sweep left the area to fall in amongst the trailing ground-attack aircraft. As such conditions were everywhere in southern Russia during this time period, it is no wonder that so few German pilots were able to rack up such individual scores. But returning to the original question, there was no rotation away from combat on the Eastern Front, you flew till you could not fly any more. And a similar situation existed for the VVS pilots as well. It was a known Soviet practice for penal battalions were used to clear mine-fields. When someone had cleared enough mines and lived to tell about it they were transferred out of such a dangerous job, a strong incentive to volunteer to clear more mines. These former mine-clearance personnel would be sent to be rear-gunners in ground-attack aircraft, just as deadly. Harold
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