Anonymous
6/17/2025, 11:54:31 AM
No.63851008
>>63832853
I don't know about that but I think people don't quite comprehend how incompetent the VVS was. I don't quite remember whether my source was Black Cross Red Star or The Air War by Glantz but tl;dr is that Soviet pilot training was kamikaze-tier with fighter pilots in particular having maybe 5 flight hours on an aircraft comparable to what they'll actually be flying. Add in terrible tactics getting forced onto pilots by high command and you've got a recipe for disaster no matter what planes they're given and even Kozhedub's squadron did poorly in the Kuban until they convinced higher level officers to let them try out new tactics instead of going in circles around bombers while getting picked off by Luftwaffe aces. The Red Army mostly got its shit together in the winter of 1942 and was broadly competent by Kursk, while at that point the Soviet air force was STILL throwing in swarms of Shturmoviks piloted by practically untrained peasants to get mulched in their hundreds. Normandie-Niemen did very well in Yaks and along with the Germans had nothing but praise for the Yak-3 in particular even though it was made by malnourished peasant women in Siberia like all their other aircraft.
I don't know about that but I think people don't quite comprehend how incompetent the VVS was. I don't quite remember whether my source was Black Cross Red Star or The Air War by Glantz but tl;dr is that Soviet pilot training was kamikaze-tier with fighter pilots in particular having maybe 5 flight hours on an aircraft comparable to what they'll actually be flying. Add in terrible tactics getting forced onto pilots by high command and you've got a recipe for disaster no matter what planes they're given and even Kozhedub's squadron did poorly in the Kuban until they convinced higher level officers to let them try out new tactics instead of going in circles around bombers while getting picked off by Luftwaffe aces. The Red Army mostly got its shit together in the winter of 1942 and was broadly competent by Kursk, while at that point the Soviet air force was STILL throwing in swarms of Shturmoviks piloted by practically untrained peasants to get mulched in their hundreds. Normandie-Niemen did very well in Yaks and along with the Germans had nothing but praise for the Yak-3 in particular even though it was made by malnourished peasant women in Siberia like all their other aircraft.