Soviet Air forces in WWII

Factual Questions
1

In World War II the main air offensives against Germany were British and later British and American.

Lately, I have been reading about the controversial air raid on Dresden. Aside from the massive death toll, one contentious aspect has been whether the raid was directed more at the Soviet Union - in the sense that on their approach on Dresden they would see just what the Western Allies could do from the air.

Others have countered that it was Soviet pressure on the UK and US to launch air raids against German centers in the east that prompted the air raid on Dresden.

Anyway, the Dresden raid has certainly led to at least one GD thread. I am not asking to debate that here. I have a more elemental question. Why didn’t the Soviets launch their own air raids? I hear very little about Soviet air power in WWII, other than the huge losses they suffered in the opening days of “Operation Barbarossa”.

Did they recover by the end of the war? Or were their air forces mostly defensive? Certainly by the time of the Korean War the Soviet Air force had developed extensively with jet fighters. Did they take a lot of German technology, engineers, and plant after the war, as both the USA and USSR did with rocket scientists, to make the famous MiGs?

2

The Soviet Air Force was actually quite effective during the latter half of the war. You just rarely hear about it.

As for large scale air raids in the style of the strategic bombing carried out by the US 8th Air Force, the Soviets felt they were a waste of resources, and focused instead on tactical air support of ground forces. The IL-2 Sturmovik was the heart of their air force - a tank killer, not a high altitude heavy bomber. They had very respectable air superiority fighters as well, in the Yak-9 and La-7, which might well have held their own against Mustangs and Spitfires.

3

I’m not an expert, but here’s what I can dredge up from memory.

The Soviets didn’t have a lot of heavy bombers and even if they had them, they would’ve had to fly a long way to bomb Germany over unfriendly territory (i.e. occupied USSR, Poland, etc.). The Soviets mainly used dive bombers, fighters, and tankbusters like the IL-2, rather than grand bombing campaigns.

4

The Soviet air force (much like the Japanese and, to a lesser extent. the German air force) was built as a tactical weapon rather than a stragegic weapon. They never invested the energy or money to build a strategic bombing component. Their air force was wholly devoted to destroying the enemy (German) military on the ground in front of their infantry and armor. Therefore, they had no significant aircraft that could penetrate German airspace and make the journey to Germany and return.

In fact, during WWII, only the U.S. and Britain made any effort to develop strategic bombing. (The Battle of Britain was, essentially, a series of terror raids by medium bombers to demoralize the British in advance of an amphibious landing and was never intended as a truly strategic effort to knock Britain out of the war from the air.)

5

As Gorsnak said, the Russians used their airforce as a ground support weapon. They were effective in that role, as were the 8th and 9th Air Forces for us. Apparently they didn’t think that strategic bombing was cost-effective and it seems to me they were correct in that opinion.

6

No it was more to do with the sea change on how the war was looked at , instead of seeing soldiers at the front lines as soldiers , it was intended to include factory workers making the war material ,and the general populace as soldiers. Dresden was a means of taking the war to the people.

Well anything is possible, Dresden is eastern germany I believe so there may have been a soviet component to the raid. But it had nothing to do with the subsequent hamburg or berlin raids

Soviet airpower is there , but it was consigned to be a tactical component of the Russian army, with no strategic component. The english were covering night time ,and the americans got the day time slot over germany with dedicated airforces that towards the end , were having fighter cover all the way in and out.

This left the soviet airforce to concentrate on close air support and air defense within their own sphere.

[QUOTE]
Did they recover by the end of the war? Or were their air forces mostly defensive?** Certainly by the time of the Korean War the Soviet Air force had developed extensively with jet fighters.** Did they take a lot of German technology, engineers, and plant after the war, as both the USA and USSR did with rocket scientists, to make the famous MiGs? QUOTE]

Migoyan is actually an old establised company , that was making “migs” all through WW2 . What actually happened was that a British Company gave them a Rolls Royce Nene engine ,at the end of the war , which accelerated their jet programs immensely.

I will leave it to others to expound on who got the better germans , us or them , personally I think it was pretty much an even exchange , but our “good germans” got better perks and working conditions ,than their “running dog imperialists”

Declan

7

“MiG” is an abbrevation of Mikoyan-Gurevich. It was initially an experimental design bureau, not a manufacturer in the Western sense (based on the Petlyakov design bureau and the GAZ No. 1 state aircraft building plant). Artem Mikoyan was the designer selected to run the bureau, and was teamed up with an aeronautical engineer named Mikhail Gurevich.

It now trades as Russian Aircraft Corporation “MiG”.

8

The Soviets did do a strategic raid on Berlin.

See here–

http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/Bunker/3351/campaigns/russrd.html

9

Both Hamburg and Berlin were bombed way before Dresden. That is what the controversy is all about. The claim is there was no justifiable military target or reason to bomb Dresden since the war was “already almost over.” This argument ignores the fact that area bombing was occuring elsewhere in Germany at the same time as the Dresden raid and no one even mentions it.

Area bombing was used by the RAF almost from the beginning because the only way to do precision bombing was in the daytime and the British couldn’t replace their losses fast enough. The US switched from precision to area bombing sometime in 1944 partly because the “precision” bombing was never that precise and resulted in higher losses which we also had trouble replacing.

The Dresden bombing was in early 1945. Hamburg was bombed in 1943 and I’m sure Berlin was also bombed that year.

10

The Soviet’s lack of a strategic bomber (which is why they were so keen on the three B-29s that made emergency landings at Soviet air bases during the war), has been addressed.

The Focke-Wulf Ta 183 was essentially the prototype for the Mig-15 of Korean War fame.

11

The most believable explanation given about the bombing of Dresden has been that it was part of the US/UK concept of a “let’s make a lot of Germans homeless and stress their resources” campaign. Many German cities had already been severely bombed leaving very few untouched cities like Dresden. (Which had no significant war related factories.)

Unfortunately (???), in the case of Dresden, the civilians were not left homeless, but left lifeless. Not a big strain on the Germans.

The Russians were going to get a good look at what US/UK bombing did to Berlin, they didn’t need to generate new examples. Also, Stalin had clearly demonstrated that levelling Russian cities did not impede his war-making capabilities. The Russian loathing for Germans was so high by then that anybody, for any reason, toasting a German city would have been viewed as a good thing by the Russians.

12

A-HEM!

http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/Bunker/3351/campaigns/russrd.html
:dubious: :mad:
The bomber was not lacking.

The military doctrine & political will to use it was.

13

Very interesting!

14

The US Airforce on Dresden

Bit late in the thread , but finally found this document , regarding the US airforce explanation of Dresden ,and what the Sovs knew or did not know.

Declan

15

I always thought the bomber campaigns were a poor return on investment and that the heavy bombers would have been better employed in Operation Cobra style attacks. After doing more reading, I now believe they were much more effective than given credit for, but not for the reason most people would think. As one book I read stated, all of those anti-aircraft guns shooting at the bombers were guns that were not on the front shooting tanks, According to this link, the flak batteries of 88 MM alone in 1942 was 15,000. Imagine an additional 15,000 anti-tank guns on the Eastern Front, in additional the countless other calibers used.

In addition to this, add the fighters used and lost against the bomber streams combined with the destruction of Germany’s petroleum industry and you start to see just how effective the bombing campaign was.

Something of note that I was very surprised to learn was that neither force thought the electrical grid was worth hitting. The British thought it would be a waste since the damage could be easily repaired. The book I was reading, “Secrets of World War II” or something similar, claimed that if the allies had gone after the German powerplants, the war would have ended at least a year earlier. I have to agree that such a conclusion is correct since the power needed to run an economy demands very large powerplants that are not easily hidden or rebuilt.
Have I sufficiently crossed into great debates material?

16

“After doing more reading, I now believe they were much more effective than given credit for, but not for the reason most people would think.”

Sorry, I forgot to expand on the “not for the reason most people thing” statement. What I was going to say was that the usual focus is on the production aspects of the bomber campaign when in reality the effectivness of this is debatable.

17

The whole thing is debatable and it’s hard to get numbers as to the cost to us vs. the cost to the enemy. Sure, the resources used for air defense were not available elsewhere. But by the same token, the resources used for strategic bombing were also not available elsewhere.

For example. Our bomb group dropped 72 tons of bombs in the normal raid and most of them missed the specific target. There were about 2000 people in the group or associated with it in the medical, ordnance, transportation, quartermaster, engineers, signal corps, and on and on. we used about 18000 gallons of aviation fuel on a mission. All of this stuff had to be produced, transported by land to a port, loaded on ships, off-loaded, transported to us.

Our task was the interdiction of communications by bombing rail lines and and road and rail bridges. When that was done just in advance of, or during, a ground operation I think it was effective in disrupting enemy logistic support in the operation. When it was done just in general at places far removed in space and time from ground actions I’m not so sure that it cost the enemy more than it cost us.