Re: Myths and Legends of the Eastern Front: Reassessing the Great Patriotic War [off topic]
 

Force ratios on the Karelian Isthmus as of June 9, 1944:

Soviet: 13th Army +Baltic Fleet approx. 1300 aircraft ready for service.

Finnish: LeR 3 (48 fighters) + LeR 4 (53 bombers) =101 aircraft.

Soviet superiority approx. 13:1. With this superiority, competent personnel competently led would have crushed the opponent in a few days. This was not achieved = incompetent personnel led by incompetents.

Re: Myths and Legends of the Eastern Front: Reassessing the Great Patriotic War [off topic]
 

Once one poet wrote: "Listen, if stars are lit it means - there is someone who needs it"
I think it had been done intentionally precisely with that aim. There are some alarming attempts in media to re-ignite mutual hostility in central-eastern Europe recently. Results of such hostility are predictable - all would-be participants will suffer, third parties will benefit and certain Yale professors will lecture the world about "bloodlands"

To smash opposing air force is only one of the missions of an air arm. And if this opposing air force is insignificant factor due to its humble strength, so the mission of its destruction is not of top priority. In other words - the Soviets had not have to fight for air superiority. It was theirs by default thanks to the implementation of one of the key prinicples of war - force concentration

Re: Myths and Legends of the Eastern Front: Reassessing the Great Patriotic War [off topic]
 

Reigniting hostility is required in the present so that the 'enemy' is clearly identified as a threat. The Polish government recently bought an Anti-Ballistic Missile system from the US. That sort of thing goes over with the people a lot better the more they feel threatened.


Here, my only goal is to help fill in the blanks. And that includes books that may only briefly touch upon air operations so that researchers wondering why aircraft that were deployed here or there were ordered to do so.


Regards,
Ed