Osprey Aircraft of the Aces 15 : Soviet Aces of World War 2

During the 1930s the exploits of Chkalov with his record breaking flights, the tremendous publicity given to the rescue of the Chelyuskin survivors (for which the Hero of the Soviet Union award was made for the very first time on 20 April 1934) and the examples set by epoch-making women aircrew like navigator (and later pilot) Marina Raskova all served to inspire volunteers to join the most glamorous of the armed services in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics - the Air Forces. No single book in English has ever appeared in the West dealing with this intriguing subject area, but now that restrictions have relaxed in the former Soviet Union, records of the deeds of the elite pilots of the various Soviet Air Forces are coming to light. Although initially equipped with very poor aircraft, and robbed of effective leadership thanks as much to Stalin's purges in the late 1930s as to the efforts of the Luftwaffe, Soviet fighter pilots soon turned the tables through the use of both lend-lease aircraft like the Hurricane, Spitfire, P-39 and P-40, and home-grown machines like the MiG-3, LaGG-3/5, Lavochkin La-5/7/9 and the Yak-1/3. Indeed, the later Yaks and Lavochkins were easily superior to the Bf 109 and Fw 190 at low-level - the favoured 'killing field' of pilots like Ivan Khozedub and Alexander Pokryshkin, both of whom finished with higher scores than the leading pilots in the West. Text by Hugh Morgan with illustrations by John Weal.

Contents

• The Making of a Fighter Ace
• Evolution of VVS Fighter Aviation 1941-45
• Fighter Aircraft and their Aces
• The Leading Aces
• Appendices