Allied Versus Russian Aircraft During WWII
 

With BoM in dev, it got me thinking of the what-if-scenario I'd rather be playing if hostilities between the Soviet and Western forces broke out with the fall of Berlin and nukes were still unavailable in the short-term.

I found this on "War History Fans" http://www.warhistoryfans.com/allied...ii-197772.html

Question posed by cptsully: In all my reading, I have never read a "what-if" scenario concerning a head to head match up between Allied and Russian aircraft in WWII.

Obviously, there was never any reason for the two to meet in battle, but as far as I know, they never even shared the same sky together. Anyone have any information otherwise?

And what about a head to head? Who would come out on top?

I know very little about the Russian pilot training or doctrine.

Thoughts anyone?

R

Response by ramjb:

well, you've got a certain lack of info then . Because Soviet and western allied aircraft did indeed fight each other during WW2. In the last days of the war the eastern and western front came up so close that it was not rare for soviet planes and US/British planes to find each other over the skies of germany. And in some places things went sour because of wrong identifications.

there are several instances of this,I'm talking now by memory as books aren't readily available for me, but I know for sure Ivan Khozedub's got two P-51s to his personal kill tally, which he got when a flight of US planes misidentified his radial-engined Lavochkin and attacked the soviet planes thinking they were FW-190s.


Anyway who would come on top?. Good question. Western air power doctrines were very different from soviet ones. The Soviet frontline aviation (VVS) was a primarily tactical air force designed and emphasized on CAS and low altitude operations. Their designs were for the most part excellent at low but lacking at high altitudes. Their design philosophy was into specialized tools. Polivalence was never a strong point in the soviet designs. Their fighter design, for instance, emphasized nimbleness and lightweight aircraft with very high power to trhust ratios, low wingloadings and relatively light weaponry, but had almost no focus in provision for external ordinance for air to ground missions, had generally short ranges, etc.
Strategic bombing was neither a priority nor a perceived need.

Western power air forces were focused on the whole opposite side of the spectrum. In general they were excellent machines at top altitudes, heavy planes of high wingloading, not that good thrust to weight ratios, and some serious raw firepower. This meant the fighters, for instance, weren't as nimble as the soviet ones, but were able to fight well at all altitudes. It also meant that they were capable of several tasks at hand, the same plane being able to do a 1000mile escort trip at 28000 feet, and then to go on a treetop-level jabo strike on the next sortie loaded up with 2000lbs of bombs and rockets.

Those examples of design differences are to pinpoint the fact that both air forces were very different in their purpose and were night and day in what it referred to doctrines of air power usage. This translated not only in different designs but in different practices aswell. Soviet machines were never built with attention to detail, they were generally speaking crudely built and finished up as they were perceived as dependable items that woudln't last long in frontline use. Western designs were much more durable, better built and rounded up. And that is just one other difference between both.

Wich of both were better? Which of both would prevail in a full scale war?. My opinion: western allied power would shred the russian air forces to bits. It's pretty much based on factual reasons and doctrical beliefs I hold, but also because of some factual evidence. I'll try to explain myself:



1-Combat record vs a dying force:

From 1943-1945 (roughly speaking, from the Battle of Kursk onwards) german air numbers in the East were outscaled by the soviet by a huge margin, the more as the war progressed. Even handicapped by being an air force consisting of 95% of unexperienced pilots and only a 5% core of excellent, battle hardened and experienced aces, with almost no middle ground between them, and because of constant (And progressively worse) fuel problems, the german Jagdwaffe caused an aberhating proportion of losses to the soviet air forces, totally out of scale with the odds involved. The Luftwaffe was built around and had doctrines more similar to the US and british ones than to the soviets (in fact it could be said that US and British AFs had doctrines similar to the german, but that's another debate ), and the pounding the Red Air Force received at the hands of such a devalued, lacking on numbers, lacking on resources and, at points, desperate Luftwaffe point out that the Soviet design and doctrine practices weren't the best around.



2-Altitude is life:

The most vital law in air combat, which holds as much truth today as did in 1915, is that he who holds the altitude, holds the advantage. The soviet designs were, all, without exception, extremely handicapped at anything over 4500m because of a lack of interest in developing proper high altitude engines/planes/doctrines. For them, the battle was to be fought down low near the troops. For the western powers the battle was to be fought up high, escorting heavy bombers in their way to target. Thus naturally when both forces were to encounter, most times the soviets would rarely hold altitude advantage. And even if they would have it, it would be at a cost of a seriously degraded performance on their machines vs planes that were flying at their sweet spots. If altitude is life, Soviet designs allowed for a pretty short one.


3-doctrinal vacuum.
Western powers had given ample thought, and had battle hardened experience, into the field of CAS (close air support): the use of air power to influx the battlefield below. They had dedicated air forces to that task (notably the 9th Air Force in the USAAF, or the whole of the Tactical Air Force, was dedicated to it). Thus, they were very experienced in the part of the air spectrum where the soviets were the strongest: low level fighting, air support, fighter-bomber runs or low level strikes. The planes weren't the best for the task (a plane with a heavy turbosupercharger that's worthless at low altitudes is handicapped at clo alts vs a plane that has none, for instance) but the doctrines, experience, and indeed plane quality was still there. Thus, the western air forces would've been a tough adversary for the Soviets in their own turf, so to speak.

However, Soviet doctrines had always neglected high altitude designs and doctrines, had given almost no thought to high-level strategic bombing, and had no real experience in countering high-level bombing raids (the luftwaffe had not done a single strategic bombing effort in the east since 1942). Thus even while there was a dedicated part of the Red Air Force for strategic high altitude defence (Voyska-PVO), they didn't had the planes, they didn't had the doctrines, and most of all, they didn't have the experience to face a determined strategic effort, much less coming from the likes of the US 8th or 15th AFs, or the British Bomber Command, which had been battling it out over the III Reich for three years in a row.

Said it in other words: the low level fighting would be undecided, even if the soviets had a slight advantage here, the western powers had both the doctrines and war experience to give them a tough fight and draw the fight there...
but when the 1000-strong US bomber B-17,B-24 and B-29 formations covered up with hundreds of battle hardened long-range escorts start appearing at 30.000 feet over Moscow, and more importantly, over the strategic industrial centers beyond the Urals, the whole soviet war effort would be sold out, with pilots with hardly any battle experience, in planes gasping for air, facing hundreds of battle-hardened veterans in planes that shined at altitudes over 5000 meters. It would be a butchery, both up on the sky and down where the bombs would fall.

And when the 1000-strong british bomber formations covered by the best night fighter intruders in the world at the time would follow up by night, the soviets would directly have nothing to stop them (there was not a single instance of anything resembling an effective night-fighter in the whole of the Soviet Union well up to the mid-50s).

In a few days (not months or weeks. Days. as soon as the first massive bombing over Moscow would happen) a lot of the VVS fighter effort at low levels would be distracted to defending against air raids over the vital centers of the Soviet Union...thus suddenly the number of fighters available to conduct the tactical warfare the soviets so much trusted on would be severely curtailed, and suddenly the tactical battle would turn towards the western side as a result (not unlike what happened with the luftwaffe after most of its fighter force had to be redeployed to the Reich so they could defend against the 8th AF raidS).

Not only that, given that the soviet designs were highly specialized in nimbleness and ability at low altitudes they were desperately unnefective at high altitudes, and the pilots weren't experience in that sort of war either. So any fighters distracted from the VVS into the PVO, would also be at a severe disadvantage against the american raids and would mean little difference in the long run. As time passes by, more and more fighters get away from VVS into PVO and suddenly the tactical presence of the Red Air Force suddenly stops being a factor (again, not unlike what happened after most of the german jagdwaffe was forced to stay within the Reich to defend against enemy raids. The luftwaffe never was a tactically offensive weapon ever again after 1943 and the 8th AF strategic campaign over Germany)


In other words, if I'm to be asked who would've won such an air war, there's little doubt: the western air forces would absolutely destroy the soviets. It would be costly and would take time, but it's plain to see that if all things are considered, the total advantage held by the western powers in strategic bombing and high altitude operations would totally tip the scale towards them in not a too long time.

Wasn't there a role distinction between the Yak's, Mig's and La's? Especially when looking at the aircraft guide of Il2 for the Mig3...
Advantages:
• Fastest high-altitude interceptor of 1941;
• Stable gun platform;
• Excellent maneuverability at high angles of attack;
• Good maneuverability at high altitudes;

Some thoughts and comments on the subject please.

Some holes in that opinion. First off, the guy assumes that the long strategic raids would hit all the Soviet weakpoints. It is not so simple.

Second, even if the aerial battles over 6000m would be carnage to Soviet aircraft, still the CAS missions would be well received by them. Both the Yanks and Soviets had a strong mudmoving department. This leads to considering the potential the Red Army had in 1945. On th ground methinks it wouldn`t be so easy for US/GB against reds. Wars IMO are still won on the ground, not in the air.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_battle_over_Niš

I find the thoughts of ramjb very questionable.

1) If the soviets were so lacking at high altitudes, why didn't germans fight them there? Probably because there was no one to fight.

2) What was the effective range of those B17, B29 raids? I guess Moscow was out of their reach. Not talking about Ural at all. And try to think about bombers without support of P51s.

3) Kill ratios were pretty balanced since La7 and Yak3 were introduced. Also pilot training was much better than in 1942 at Stalingrad. I heard that some went to combat missions with less than 4 flight hours.
I recommend reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavochkin_La-7

Only 115 La-7s were lost in air combat

and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakovlev_Yak-3.

Consequently, the Luftwaffe issued an order to "avoid combat with Yak fighters without an oil cooler under the nose and with an inclined aerial mast below 5000 m"


4) Allies didn't face the best german pilots since BoB. Also germany itself was poorly defended by minor Luftwaffe forces. Making conclusions based on fights when luftwaffe was outnumbered even worse than on the eastern front is not helping either.

5) The soviets had high altitude fighter planes. Mig 3 had been around since 1941. And they had maybe 3 000 of them.

I could a pit picky here (and/or wrong) but I thought the Russians were Allies?

The non aggression pact with Germany did not mean they were at war with West.

A personal view is that if the war dragged on then the USA/UK forces would win the air battle but I doubt that it would have lasted long. The Russian Army had large numbers of heavy tanks and the allies didn't.

If the USSR could get the initial strike then their army had a number of advantages.

The close support low medium air war is probably too close to call, strategic long range missions the Russians didn't have a chance but it would take time to make a difference

I'm not sure the number of Soviet tanks would have been as great a factor. USA/UK probably would have had control of the air, which would have put the tanks at risk, just as it did to German tanks in western Europe.

Then again, if we had gone after the Sovs, would the remnants of the German army have gone with us? They still had a lot of men under arms at the end of the war. Given the German fear of the communists "barbarians", and being re-supplied with Allied materiel, maybe the Red army would have been given a bloody nose.

Just my take, and really, who knows?

binky9

Dammit! I forgot that if .50cal could take down a Tiger tank then they would obliterate those tiny T34 and IS2!

I'm joking here :-)

I agree with Carguy and Rumcajs.

Russian would need a plane to intercept the heavy bombers at high altitude... La-7 best altitude was 6km and it was a very agile plane compared to late 109s (with gunpods because of the weak firepower) and 190s. Plus it could mount 3 Berezin B-20 over the engine, and that was really a great weapon. Still the Mig3 could have been improved...

US would still have air superiority because of the range of the P-51 but I'm not sure if they could actually CAP russian airbases: US planes need to go under 2km to get the Russian... A Yak3 or a La-7 would jump on them easily. And what about AA production?

Instead what about IL2s attacking US ground forces? 20mm shells were quite inefficent against it the german had to go at ground level to hit IL2's radiators. What about attacking them with .50cals? What about P47 and P38 fighting at that low altitude.

If (and this is a big IF) the russian could not quickly respond to the heavy bomber threat maybe US could do some damage. Infact I think that reaction should be the main factor and the russian did great in that (and they were desperate too at the start of the war...).

But I still have my doubt that they could really win the war against the Red: as carguy says the wars are won on the ground and there the Russians should have a great advantage.

I don't think the idea of the Western and Soviet forces clashing is as far fetched a "what if" scenario as some may seem to think.

Stalin was always incredibly critical of Western Democracy and the capitalist system which, understandably, played a major part in the non-aggression pact with the National Socialist regime. During the early stages of Nazi rule, the more radical groups (Essentially, as crazy as it sounds: The left wing Nazis... the Socialist element within NS) within the NSDAP called for more than just a non-aggression pact and, in communication with Trotsky at the time, even tried to form an alliance of sorts with Communist Russia..... of course these ideas were stamped out rather dramatically by the Hitler supporters within the party with the "Night of the Long Knives" resulting in Otto Strasser, upon hearing of the execution of his brother Gregor, forming the Black Front and going into hiding having been declared public enemy No. 1 by Hitler and pursued constantly by the SS and Gestapo.

Of course, we all know what happened to Trotsky in the end.

General Patton was also no fan of his Soviet allies, comparing them to "Mongolian Bandits". He also expressed a certain sadness, later on, that the Allies didn't march straight through Berlin and into Moscow.

On May 7th 1945, whilst in communication with US secretary of War Robert Patterson, Patton said the following:

"Let's keep our boots polished, bayonets sharpened, and present a picture of force and strength to the Red Army. This is the only language they understand and respect."

When challenged, Patton responded:

".....we have had a victory over the Germans and disarmed them, but we have failed in the liberation of Europe; we have lost the war!"

As you can see from the above.... war with the Soviet Union was actually far from unimaginable. I would go so far as to say it's actually surprising it didn't happen.

Of course, instead, we got the Cold War.

..... and Rocky 4 LMAO