Hey leonid, realizing more people from IL-2 boards play this game also. That is until IL-2 is released anyway
Here is something else to read on the topic:
From the theard "The Best" at simhq boards
http://www.simhq.com/simhq3/sims/boards/bbs/Forum35/HTML/000869.html and this
Christer Bergström
Air war over the Eastern Front in comparison to the West
Thursday Mar 8, 00:08:29 2001
I have posted this article as a part of a discussion on the Russian Military Forum, and I thought it might be of interest to the community on this board as well:
It is difficult to compare the Western Front with the Eastern Front, since the nature of the air wars on the various fronts differed widely. To compare figures leads to very little.
Without doubt, the relation between the Luftwaffe's losses and victories were less favorable in
"the West" than in "the East". During the first years of the war in the East, this can be attributed largely to lacking quality on the Soviet side - regarding pilot training and the quality of the equipment, as well as tactics.
However, it should also be noted that the airmen of the Luftwaffe had amassed an experience that was above that of any other air force - including the RAF and the USAAF.
To a large extent, the successes achieved by the German fighter pilots were due to tactical circumstances. In 1941 and 1942, they were able to score large successes against the Soviets because the German fighter pilots operated offensively (free hunting) against an adversary that was operating mainly defensively. In the summer of 1941, 7./JG 26 enjoyed the same situation in the Mediterranean area - it operated in free hunting sorties against British fighters that were tasked to defend Malta against enemy bombers.
Thus, in the summer of 1941, 7./JG 26 claimed fifty-two victories, mainly against RAF fighters - without losing a single pilot - in the Mediterranean area. That does not necessarily indicate that 7./JG 26's pilots were vastly superior to their RAF opponents. Instead, one can say that 7./JG 26's pilots succeeded in their task, while the RAF fighter pilots succeeded in =their= task.
It should also be pointed out that the most spectacular achievement by any fighter pilot in terms of shot down aircraft was when Hans-Joachim Marseille claimed seventeen victories - all against British fighters - on one day, September 1, 1942.
In order to get a rather even comparison, I have studied a case when there were mainly Soviet fighters operating against the Luftwaffe - and I have chosen the Murmansk area in August 1942. The Soviet fighter pilots in the Murmansk area in fact managed better against the Bf 109s than did the airmen of RAF Fighter Command during the same period. According to the loss statistics of both sides, the air war over Western Europe in 1942 cost RAF Fighter Command an average of 3.5 planes for every German fighter destroyed in combat. The statistics were even more negative, from a British point of view, in North Africa, where on average seven Allied fighters were lost for every Bf 109 shot down--once again according to the loss statistics of both sides. In the Murmansk area, the thirty-four Soviet and ten German fighters lost in combat during August 1942 give the relation 3.4 to 1.
There are several known cases where German fighters shot down large numbers of Soviet bombers during a single day, even after 1941. For instance, on July 5, 1942, II./JG 51 claimed claimed forty-six Soviet aircraft shot down - most of them bombers. However, what we are dealing with here are medium bombers.
A parallel to this is an event on the Western Front that took place as late as December 23, 1944. That day the Germans dispatched strong fighter forces against large formations of U.S. medium bombers (B-26s) that appeared over the Western Front. In an air battle with great similarities to some of the large air battles that were fought on the Eastern Front, the German fighter pilots claimed no less than 127 American and British aircraft shot down - including 73 against B-26s - on December 23, 1944.
However, there is one main difference between this operation and the main character of the operations on the Eastern Front: At the same time, the Americans dispatched a very high number of heavy bombers on strategic bombing raids, and these heavies were provided with an overwhelming escort by fighters that actively sought out the Luftwaffe fighters that took off to intercept the heavies. On December 23, 1944, a total of 2,046 U.S. heavy bombers, 2,010 fighters, and 376 medium bombers were dispatched. In addition to this total, the RAF dispatched 1,243 fighter sorties. This is the main reason why also the Luftwaffe sustained very high losses on December 23, 1944.
On the Eastern Front, the Soviets deployed their air force almost exclusively on tactical operations intended to support their ground troops. There were Soviet aircraft "everywhere" over the frontline - operating in small formations so that every sector could be covered all the time - but only rarely, and in very small formations, were there any fighter intrusions against the German airfields.
Most of the German pilot veterans that I have interviewed agree that after the first period of war on the Eastern Front, they could see no difference in pilot qualities between the Soviet airmen and those of the RAF and the USAAF.
Günther Rall (275 victories) - who was posted to the Reichsverteidigung in the spring of 1944, after serving over France and the English Channel in 1940, and on the Eastern Front 1941 - 1944 –
told me only two weeks ago: "The Americans were no better fighter pilots than the Russians. The Russian fighter pilots were most aggressive and we had to fight hard against them."
Rall described how he - the experienced Eastern Front veteran - encountered American fighter pilots for the first time: He bounced a formation of Lightings from above, "in the Eastern Front style", and the Americans apparently were so shocked that they immediately entered a Lufbery circle - "just as the Russians had done in the early years". With the deflection shooting method that Rall had developed during his six hundred combat sorties on the Eastern Front, he could shoot down one of the Lightnings (this was one of the three aircraft that U.S. 364 FG lost - without any victories to balance - on April 29, 1944). Then Rall had to disengage since his
Bf 109 was running out of fuel.
The Soviet Air Force in 1945 had amassed a fairly large core of immensely experienced combat airmen - men (and women) with experience from 400, 500, 600, or even more combat sorties. Due to the American and British "tour" system, there hardly were any American or British airmen with that amount of combat experience. Francis S. Gabreski, the top scoring ace in 8th USAAF, had carried out a total of 153 combat sorties when he was shot down and captured in 1944. The top scoring American ace in service in Europe when the war ended was Lt Col David C. Schilling, with 22 victories and 132 combat sorties.
At the same time, the Soviet Air Force could muster experienced veterans such as Nikolay Skomorokhov (46 + 8 victories and 605 combat sorties), Andrey Kulagin (32 + 7 victories and 762 combat sorties), Aleksey Reshetov (35 + 8 victories and 821 combat sorties), Vasiliy Knyazev (29 victories and 1,088 combat sorties), and Petr Pilyutov (23 victories and 1,945 combat sorties) - only to mention a few. I am quite sure that the Luftwaffe veterans with 400, 500, 600, and even more combat sorties were the only ones who were able to offer these Soviet veterans an even fight. (The record, more than two thousand combat sorties, was achieved by Stuka pilot Hans-Ulrich Rudel, but fighter pilots such as Heinz Bär, Herbert Ihlefeld, Gerhard Barkhorn, Anton Hackl, and Erich Rudorffer carried out more than one thousand combat sorties each.)
In 1945, the USAAF, the RAF, and the Soviet Air Forces all were modern and highly efficient war machines, adequately adapted to the doctrines of their respective armed forces.
Best wishes
Christer Bergström
www.blackcross-redstar.com
