wannabetheace
05-04-2009, 02:38 AM
As far as concerned, most of the documentary I saw was usually ill sided informations with propaganda purpose. Like those many claimed about Dogfight series from Discovery channel. And people in western europe and States are so bombarded with that kind of information can't accept some historic real facts on Eastern front. They specially don't have much information about air war in East Front. So they think that major air battle took place in western front with us,uk vs germany. So I think they can only see these in the western point of view. For me, I want to take information from both sides regarding both soviet and western&US have their own propagada to certain degree. Thus read from both resources and filter out which part is propa and which part is close to true.
some info written by Andrey
I have read a book about the air actions during the kursk battle. It is in Russian. "Nad Ognennoi Dugoi" ("Over The Fired Arch") by V. Gorbach..
If to use simply the actions of German fighters.
They tried to shoot down as more planes as possible but avoided from dog-fights. They used
"bite and run away" tactics often.
The result was following:
Bu the end of every operation (there were 4 soviet operations from July 5th till August 23rdin the Kursk Battle) the Soviet air units were eghausted and had VERY large casualties. So by the end of operation the ability of Soviet air units to fight was very limited. Some air divisions contained 3-5 planes as ready-to-action.
But in the initial phase of the operations and in the middle the German ground forces suffered from Soviet planes very much because the German fighters didn't try to prevent the Soviet attacks against German ground forces "at any price".
Also the Germans used their planes in concentrated powerful fists that wandered between "hot" points of the Soviet-German Front. As result many directions were absolutely uncovered by German fighters.
For example, during operation "rumiantsev" (counteroffensive in the southern part of the Kursk Arch in August 1943) for a few first days powerful groups of IL-2 and Pe-2 crushed German ground positions and moving along roads reserves again and again without any resistance in air. It let to Soviet ground troops to capture many important objects including Belgorod.
For German ground forces it was a hell.
Fot example,
The movement of the Stepp Front met hard resistance in powerful fortifications to north from Belgorod. The attacking Soviet infantry was supported by practically constant actions of IL-2 which operated in groups of 12-24 planes. But it was not enough in that time.
Supporting the ground forces the aircraft o the 5th Air Army made one more mass blow against the german resistance regions in 8:30 - 8:45 AM. 100 Pe-2 under the coverage of 80 fighters took part in it. In the result 110 tonn bombs were dropped on the region of German defence with equare of 7 square kilometers (it meant 17 tonn per 1 km). The flak artillery was neutralized during the first air strike.
In the same time in the region of Visloe where the e nemy also resisted very hard 60 IL-2, operating in groups of 12-15 planes, inflicted heavy casualtires to enemy infantry and artillery. It let to capture Visloe with minimal casualties.
The same blows were done against enemy in 4km to west from Visloe. The advancing ground forces collided against powerful fire fist of 15 artillery and mortar batteries. Also the German defence was supported by large mobile forces. The decisive part of the success there was done by aircraft. Two strong groups of IL-2 and Pe-2 neutralized completely all the fire system of the enemy. Especially good were actions of the 23 IL-2 of Major Lavrinenko which attacked the group of 70 trucks and 7 enemy artillery batteries. As result 4 heavy tanks, 20 trucks were destriyed and 4 batteries were neutralized.
And so on...
And here what is written in documents of the Soviet 5th Fighter Air Corps in August 3rd (the first day of the operation). "For the currect day the German fighter aircraft was not active. Only the groups of enemy fighters that had superiority in amount went into dog-fights. Separate groups of 2 or 4 enemy fighters avoided from combat in the most cases when they met with our fighters"
Especially it is interesting to read if to know who operated against the Soviets in that day in that part of the frontline. Those were fighters of famous III/JG52 of Gunter Rahll ! In that day (August 3rd) both Berthold Korts and Erich Hartmann (!!!) shot down there 4 Soviet planes. Karl Steffen shot down 5 planes.
Here what Gorbach wrote about the German fighters on August 5th.
"The actions of JG52 were very effective but couldn't influent the situation on the ground. On August 5th the following famous Grman aces had victories - Erich Hartmann (5), Gunter Rahll (3), Gerkhard Barkhorn (3). But those famous aces didn't break up any important air strike against the positions of German ground forces. It is confirmed by the fact that from 28 their victories of August 5th only 6 planes were assault planes IL-2 and Pe-2"
Only a few days later the German command saw what was going on and began to gather there the most of Luftwaffe units from the whole Soviet-German Front.
... continue more of his post can be found here http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=61920&page=2
some info written by Andrey
I have read a book about the air actions during the kursk battle. It is in Russian. "Nad Ognennoi Dugoi" ("Over The Fired Arch") by V. Gorbach..
If to use simply the actions of German fighters.
They tried to shoot down as more planes as possible but avoided from dog-fights. They used
"bite and run away" tactics often.
The result was following:
Bu the end of every operation (there were 4 soviet operations from July 5th till August 23rdin the Kursk Battle) the Soviet air units were eghausted and had VERY large casualties. So by the end of operation the ability of Soviet air units to fight was very limited. Some air divisions contained 3-5 planes as ready-to-action.
But in the initial phase of the operations and in the middle the German ground forces suffered from Soviet planes very much because the German fighters didn't try to prevent the Soviet attacks against German ground forces "at any price".
Also the Germans used their planes in concentrated powerful fists that wandered between "hot" points of the Soviet-German Front. As result many directions were absolutely uncovered by German fighters.
For example, during operation "rumiantsev" (counteroffensive in the southern part of the Kursk Arch in August 1943) for a few first days powerful groups of IL-2 and Pe-2 crushed German ground positions and moving along roads reserves again and again without any resistance in air. It let to Soviet ground troops to capture many important objects including Belgorod.
For German ground forces it was a hell.
Fot example,
The movement of the Stepp Front met hard resistance in powerful fortifications to north from Belgorod. The attacking Soviet infantry was supported by practically constant actions of IL-2 which operated in groups of 12-24 planes. But it was not enough in that time.
Supporting the ground forces the aircraft o the 5th Air Army made one more mass blow against the german resistance regions in 8:30 - 8:45 AM. 100 Pe-2 under the coverage of 80 fighters took part in it. In the result 110 tonn bombs were dropped on the region of German defence with equare of 7 square kilometers (it meant 17 tonn per 1 km). The flak artillery was neutralized during the first air strike.
In the same time in the region of Visloe where the e nemy also resisted very hard 60 IL-2, operating in groups of 12-15 planes, inflicted heavy casualtires to enemy infantry and artillery. It let to capture Visloe with minimal casualties.
The same blows were done against enemy in 4km to west from Visloe. The advancing ground forces collided against powerful fire fist of 15 artillery and mortar batteries. Also the German defence was supported by large mobile forces. The decisive part of the success there was done by aircraft. Two strong groups of IL-2 and Pe-2 neutralized completely all the fire system of the enemy. Especially good were actions of the 23 IL-2 of Major Lavrinenko which attacked the group of 70 trucks and 7 enemy artillery batteries. As result 4 heavy tanks, 20 trucks were destriyed and 4 batteries were neutralized.
And so on...
And here what is written in documents of the Soviet 5th Fighter Air Corps in August 3rd (the first day of the operation). "For the currect day the German fighter aircraft was not active. Only the groups of enemy fighters that had superiority in amount went into dog-fights. Separate groups of 2 or 4 enemy fighters avoided from combat in the most cases when they met with our fighters"
Especially it is interesting to read if to know who operated against the Soviets in that day in that part of the frontline. Those were fighters of famous III/JG52 of Gunter Rahll ! In that day (August 3rd) both Berthold Korts and Erich Hartmann (!!!) shot down there 4 Soviet planes. Karl Steffen shot down 5 planes.
Here what Gorbach wrote about the German fighters on August 5th.
"The actions of JG52 were very effective but couldn't influent the situation on the ground. On August 5th the following famous Grman aces had victories - Erich Hartmann (5), Gunter Rahll (3), Gerkhard Barkhorn (3). But those famous aces didn't break up any important air strike against the positions of German ground forces. It is confirmed by the fact that from 28 their victories of August 5th only 6 planes were assault planes IL-2 and Pe-2"
Only a few days later the German command saw what was going on and began to gather there the most of Luftwaffe units from the whole Soviet-German Front.
... continue more of his post can be found here http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=61920&page=2