Originally posted by Panzzer
Ah, but how many of those saw any action in WWII, only a handful.
Are you daft? I have a few P-63 and P-39 books at home (and not with me here at work), but Wikipedia essentially mirrors what my books say:
"In the Far East, P-63 and P-39 aircraft were used in "August Storm," the Soviet invasion of Manchukoku and northern Korea."
and
"By a 1943 agreement, P-63s were disallowed for Soviet use against Germany and were supposed to be concentrated in the Soviet Far East for an eventual attack on Japan. However, there are many unconfirmed reports from both the Soviet and German side that P-63s did indeed see service against the Luftwaffe. Most notably, one of Pokryshkin's pilots reports in his memoirs published in the 1990s that the entire 4th GvIAP was secretly converted to P-63s in 1944, while officially still flying P-39s. One account states they were in action at Koenigsberg, in Poland and in the final assault on Berlin. There are German reports of P-63s shot down by both fighters and flak. Nevertheless, all Soviet records show nothing but P-39s used against Germany."
And as for their numbers:
"Russian ferry pilots, many of them women, would take delivery of the aircraft at Nome and fly them to the Soviet Union over the Bering Strait. 2,397 such aircraft were delivered, out of the total 3,303 production aircraft (72.6%)."
Hardly an insignificant amount...
-Llama
