Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

I wonder how many victories did claim Soviet airmen before 22 VI 1941?

There were several small or big air war:

in Spain 1936-1938: I can estimate at least over 210, or even more victories up to 300?
in Chalchyn-Gol: there were about 650 victories.
in Poland IX 1939: several: about 10-15 victories.
in Winter War 1939-1940: there were about 650 credited victories
in China 1937-1940: maybe 100 or more?
in Rumunia in summer 1940: a few (below 10).

So: Soviet airman could attained about 1500-1700 credited victories before 22 VI 1941.

Any comments to above estimation?

Regards,
mw

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

Hello Mirek
FAF lost 53 a/c on combat ops for all causes during the Winter War, subtract AA and operational losses and add those which force-landed or crash-landed after air combat dam. but were repaired later, so you get real figure to “legitimate” Soviet kills during the Winter War.

Juha

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

This simple mean that entire Japan and Finland aviation was wiped off....

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

I have never heard of the air battles against Romania in 1940 ?

On the other hand there is one war missing, the civil war between Red and White Russians (and connex conflicts, with Poland for example) but that is maybe too early for you. Both sides used aircraft and there were air battles.

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

Deeply sorry, but I think you are for a long time ago have undrestanand and more then well know, that one thing is claimed and credited victory (by own units commanders and superiors). Second thing is real damage - destruction of plane.
Of course in my estimation I do not count credited victores as a total, and any real loss for enemy side. In reality you should dived claimed and credited vicores by 3-4 and sometiems even more (in Winter War about 7-8 factor) to get real losses on oposite side.

I exactly know real loss of FAF (total losses+ damaged), JAAF over Chachyn-Gol, about Polish Losses in IX 1939, some victories over China (about 80). There were a few air clashes over Rumiania in summer 1940 (if I right rember Sovitet fighters shot down 1xPZL P.7 and 1 x IAR-37 or 39)

So in above calculatin I only think about claimed + credited Soviet victories, but not about real losses done to oposite side. These are two very separate things.

Regards,
mw

BTW
FAF's total losses of course were much higher (destroyed + damaged)then 53. The last figure is if I am right remeber only shot down by Sovite (in air combat and A/A) and total losses excluding damaged and later repaired.

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

Hello Mirek
my source might have been a slightly off, I counted 56 lost in operations plus 4 planes of Swedish volunteers (F 19) for all causes, incl take off accidents even one Ripon which went through ice during a take-off but I didn't have time to check if all accidents happened during operational flights, so the figures are max for lost a/c during operational flights. Of course there were also losses during training, test and transfer flights.

Juha

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

Japanese losses are officially 162 aircraft + 220 "under repair" during the Nomohan incident.
Those figures may be underestimated : for instance only 1 ki-10 was offically lost, but it is none that at least 3 were lost

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

Juha, according to "Gloster Gladiator & Hawker Hart: in combat with Swedish voluntary Wing F19, Finland 1940", Swdish lost 3 Hawker Hart in combat on Jan 12 1940, 1 Gladiator in combat on Jan 23 1940, 1 Gladiator lost in accident on Feb 20 1940 and another Gladiator lost in accident on Mar 10 1940. Total 6 aircrafts.

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

Hello Mars
well, the last Glad was lost during a post maintenance test flight, so it was not lost in ops, but I might have missed one loss. I cannot find my best source of F 19 losses just now to check the 20 Feb loss, which might well have been happened at the end of a combat sortie.

Juha

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

Juha, I was responding to your comments about "plus 4 planes of Swedish volunteers (F 19) for all causes"

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

Hello Mars
OK, what I meant was "lost to all causes during oper. sorties". I found my best source on F 19 losses but it doesn't give any info on 20 Feb loss, or at least I didn't find any, the book doesn't progress chronically, so it is a little awkward to use when looking a detail of something that happened on day x.

Juha

Juha

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

at Page 117 of the book I mentioned:
"Swedish crash report 20th February 1940:
Gloster Gladiator (J 8A Fv no.282?) From F 19 (Finnish no. S-55). Markings: Yellow E.

The complete breakdown happened at landing. Folloing a coming storm the group leader is of the opinion that it is necessary, when taking into account the vulnerable position of the aircraft at current location, to fly to a lake for parking out of the wind for the night. At landing however, the plane is caught by strong bursts of wind and has overturned. Because of the damage cuased: Wing broken, engine and propeller write off. The aircraft has been deemed completely broken. The pilot was unharmed.

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

Hello Mars
thanks a lot for the info.
So it was at the end of a non operational flight. Swedes had flown also operational sorties during that day and had fought one air combat (Glad vs SB) so without the info you gave it would have been impossible to say was the accident related to a operational sortie or not.

Juha

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

Hello Mirek
on Soviet claim during Winter War, even if old Soviet claim was that FAF lost 650 a/c during the winter war, only 427 aerial victories were said to be claimed by Soviet air forces. According to modern research there were only 388 claims: 188 by fighter pilots, 146 by air gunners and 54 by VVS KBF(43 by fighters and 11 by air gunners). We know that air gunner claims were much inflated so Soviet fighter pilots' claims were not so outlandish.

Juha

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

For spain hard to say since republican pilots were usually making "common cash box" for victories. 841 individual and shared claims for republican aviation. Now what was the soviet part?

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

In Spain on republican side, much often was counting as colective victories, but when you add all Soviet victoires which are established by Russian reasarcher S. Abrasov, he put individual list of all Soviet victory claims and after you will add them you will get about 210 v., as a not collective victories but individual.
Spain and Chalchyn-Gol is difficoult, because Soviet had claimed collective victories, not individual, plus very often overclaiming is very high.


Soviete fougth from X/XI 1936 up to X 1938 in Spain mostly on most hotes spots, plus side by side with Spain's pilots, so this is next problem with exacte figure of their all victories.

mw

BTW
I thougt about the most fresh victory claime's list, which is the most higher one, not corrected with later reasarches. Shortyly after Winter War Soviet pilots had claimed several hundres victories over FAF's planes (of coures Finns had lost much less then these claimes.

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

Hello
I dig a bit deeper and it seems that after all 53 is the right figure for FAF losses during combat ops. 34 to fighters, 4 to Soviet AA, 1 to bombing, 6 missing but IIRC for most there are a suitable Soviet fighter pilot claim, 1 to Finnish AA, 2 to technical problems, 5 because of bad weather. 8 other were also lost: 3 during training flights, 4 during delivery flights and 1 destroyed by Finns when they withdrew behind new borders. Plus the 4/2 lost by F 19.

Juha

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

Soviet aerial claims v Japanese losses in Nomonhan War:

The most common total for Soviet claims seems to be 660, (for example
Stepanov "Air Warfare in the Khalkin Gol", or Pages of Russian Military
History), though other estimates have appeared, (589 in Bergstrom/Mikhailov "Black Cross Red Star").

Actual Japanese losses are given variously as:
-164 of which 90 were combat losses (by Stepanov, though he mentions lack of detail and possibility of combat writeoffs among the other 74 in his source, which he doesn't name, and he doesn't mention AAA)

-"around 100" (Japanese Monograph No. 144, Military History
Section HQ AAF Far East [Japanese Monographs are a series of campaign histories of the Japanese forces written by Japanese officers for the US occupation force after the Pacific War]),

-by counting up individual incidents and monthly statistics in "Nomonhan" by Coox, I count around 115, including some mentioned instances of AAA and combat/operational losses, but it seems a large majority of the 115 were air combat losses. Coox's sources were Japanese archives and interviews with Japanese participants.

Joe

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

To Juha and Joe

I have a "big problem" with classification of victory (several times it was earlier discused). Giving only total loss, for German it is simple damage over 60%, means many victories are delated from many pilot's victory list.

There were many cases of shot down but later force landed and again returned plane into own unit.
There were also a very very few cases, where plane was hit, very slight damaged, but its pilot was wounded and soon or later he died of wounds on the ground.
Costs of pilot's training (general pilot value) are higher then costs of any plane. In this way plane had survived but its pilot had not.

For example in Chalchyn-Gol, where Soviet side lost total 209 in combat plus 49 non-combat loses, total 258 lost military planes, but next big losses were damaged planes. Sovite had lost additional next 385 damaged fighters plus 51 next bombers.
Only presenting amount of destroyed planes means that Japan pilots "did not do nothing" with these over 400 next damaged planes. It is very strange.

There were on Japan side also wilde exagaration - 1260 destroyed Soviet planes (1162 in air combats plus 98 on the ground) or other data more then 1000 destoryed Soviet planes. Of course it has nothing with real Soviet losses, which are 2-5 times less.

Soviet had shot down 588 in air combats (529 fighters, 42 bombers, 17 reccon) and the next 58 destroyed on the ground, plus 14 by A/A.

Of course JAAF had lost total almost 6 times less fighters (but similar number was damaged too: 96 Ki-27 total lost plus 124 damaged, returned into units, all 220; plus next 5 Ki-10).

The same case is with Winter War on the both side.
I think giving only total losses are not right way of presenting success on any side. Damaged, force landed plane also counts as a victory too.

Regards,
mw

BTW
Soviet and JAAF losses accoridng the last V. Kondratiev book "Bitva nad stepju", Moskwa 2008.

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

Mirek Wawrzynski,

I believe that you have a point about at least noting aircraft that were damaged.
An extreme example would be the Western Desert in 41 and 42. In 'Fighters over the Desert' by Shores and Ring, there is mention of the British recovering over 1000 aircraft in a 17 week period that had crash landed after combat. Of these, some 800 were repaired and returned to service. Most, if not all of these, would have been claimed by German or Italian pilots as victories.
Also in WW1, many aircraft were forced to land after minor damage and were recovered. They were also claimed as victories.

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

Yes this is it, in Spain the plane, which did not returned to own airfiled was credited as a victory, this plane could returned later in a few hours or days, after force landing.
I know, that some people are very strictly credite a victory only as a total written off/ destroyed enemy plane. OK, but what about damages planes and efforts to damage them too. It is nothing?

mw

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

Mirek, I do see your point. But I also see practical problems with evaluating claim accuracy or kill ratio's by using damaged planes as victories for the other side.

It is often difficult enough to define and count 'destroyed' a/c (what '% damage' in the German system? do 'forced landings' at home base count, or 'crash landings', or how about if it's in a field somewhere). This gets more complicated still for damage. For example, Japanese Navy operational reports usually give damage in detail down to number of holes in the plane (does 1 hole in a Zero confirm the claim of an opposing Allied pilot to have shot down a Zero?).

And accurate info about losses is often hard to find, damage much more difficult, especially for both sides. For example, it's taken decades to know 'real' Communist MiG-15 losses in Korea to F-86's in any detail, in sources open to Westerners. Soviet claims of F-86's were also at a high ratio to actual outright losses of F-86's, (absolute numbers and ratio was actually both fairly similar to Nomonhan, coincidentally). But it's also taken a long time to find comprehensive data on damaged F-86's (I think I have most of it, but a few random month's folder's were just lost it seems). And if we add those to Soviet 'victories' (the numbers are again coincidentally similar to Type 97's at Nomonhan), we still don't have the same info on Soviet, let alone Chinese or NK, *damaged* MiG's.

And, air arms which tried more seriously to keep their claims in line with reality often credited their pilots with 'probable' and 'damaged'. Again using Korea example, if we could find comprehensive data on MiG-15 damage in Korea, the US overclaim rate, just counting 'destroyed' credits, would surely drop below 1, underlcaim...because many 100's of MiG's were only credited as 'damaged' (and the several 100 actually destroyed for all three MiG AF's were ~75%, perhaps, of what US credited as 'destroyed'). This would be a strange result. OTOH if we didn't count damaged MiG's as 'victories' because the USAF had only claimed them damaged, but did count damaged F-86's as verifying Soviet claims of F-86's destroyed (they didn't officially credit 'damaged'), that doesn't seem very evenhanded. AFAIK, Allies AF's in WWII often also kept track of 'damage' and 'probable' credits, but not always or uniformly.

But more info is always better, and I'm very interested in the book you mentioned about Japanese losses in 1939. Did Kondratiev give his original Japanese source for those numbers?

In summary, I absolutely agree that information about damaged a/c further *clarifies* the results of air combat. It gives a solid explanation why a pilot might have believed he'd destroyed an opposing plane: he had indeed hit it. But I don't know about a practice of counting damaged a/c in scores which were supposed to have represented destroyed a/c.

Joe

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

Gentlemen,

I for one didn't mean to suggest that damaged a/c be given the same weight in score totals as a destroyed a/c. My point, poorly expressed, was that damaged a/c give a partial explanation for over claiming.

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

Did not want to enter into issues of the award winning and determination which is so successful and what not. However, failed to avoid it. :-)

In the event of a loss of Japanese aviation Kondratieva uses data from the already known (the basis of Air Enthusiast, and an article from the 70s).
Kondratieva did a very interesting analysis of Soviet losses and it is actually a novel approach. Slightly increased the total Soviet losses to those not yet known (249 totally destroyed).
The description of the Soviet Union because of its publication is very interesting, it complements the loss of the Japanese, but it uses the well-known sources of publications issued in English.

mw

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

Off the topic, but interesting, :-)
Just now, has beed edited in Russia a book about Soviet Aces of 1950-1953 over Korea, looks very interesting, only in Russia.

http://aerospaceproject.ru/book/46.html

http://aerospaceproject.ru/book/min/asy.gif

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

Not exactly

If you've got the S. Abrossov's book, read it carefully.
First, soviet homologation system changed several times throughout spanish war.

Secund, soviet personnal victories published by Abrossov are mainly uncomplete and issued from personnal pilot's personnal files and not always directly from war diaries. There is clearly a missing link between them; and moreover victory lists could have been "arranged" for the Kremlin summer 1937 meeting with Alksnis. It's another source for soviet pilot's credits, but rather an optimistic one.

Third, a certain overclaim is always natural in combat. I won't explain why, just try some aerobaics on a Yak, Zlin or Sukhoï in an aeroclub of yours and add to it, (rather imagine) the stess to be shooted down... In Spain overclaim was sometimes inflated by propaganda, then by multiple claims for the same damaged/destroyed plane between spaniards and russians, different Mosca/Chato squadrons, even between the same squadron/vic pilots ! On massive dogfights involving sometimes more than 50-100 planes from the both sides, nobody had really the time to follow falling planes.

Fourth, in Spain fought the most nimble planes of the whole aviation history: Fiats CR-32 (13,5s ToT), Heinkel 51 (12s), Chatos (8,5), Moscas (14,5). No mean to keep them classical "3 secunds" on the gunsight. All were rugged but underarmed, moreover unstable gun platform for soviet ones, and all of them could absorb a lot of punishment due to structural particularities. (Welded steel tubes, monocoque fuselages...).
A lot of planes were tremendously so called "salted" and "peppered" by bullets without conlusive results. Specially italian SM-79 that used to return the way back gliding on 1 or a one half of engine. Remember the 8th décember when full 28 Polikarpov fired 62 (!) thousand bullets at short distance (less than 50m in spain) on Ju-52's, shooting down only one plane, a secund one suffering extensive damage.

At end without reliable and complete accounts for the franquist side difficult to estimate republican and moreover soviet overclaim. Except for soviet deliveries from Abrosov's book, the polemic about german, italian deliveries and franquist total losses is far from being dead and burried...

I would have from mysleft that's about to be closed for french deliveries too, the discrepancy's touching about 4-5 combat planes, has no significant meaning.

Regards

Regards

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

Yes you are right, it had changed, different in 1936 and other in 1938. But it is waste of time to expalin it.


It is obvious, on the begining on this post I do not ask about any kind of credibility or verification of Soviete victories, but asked about any general figures claimed victories by Sovite pilots? No matter how many planes of enemy side were in fact written off. This is not a point.
So, if you remeber, that for example I-16 typ 5 had 2 x 7,62 or typ 6 3 X 7,62 for modern metal planes it was very low effecitve guns (similar "power" like fighters like in WW I but planes were much better and faster). Even I-16 typ 10 with 4 x 7,62, was not better due to jamming of 2 guns. Similar situation with I-15, I-15bis. Pilots did what they could, nothing more in these fighters.

Regards,
mw

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

Mirek,, or if anyone else might known, do you know any bookseller that sells that book, who accepts regular international credit cards (like Visa and such) and ships overseas? The one site I found required a certain payment system I wasn't familiar with, maybe it's only used in Russia.

Joe

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

Hello,

In rthe same way as JoeB, I'm interested in how to obtain the book by S. Abrasov about the Russian claims in Spain.
Anyone knows were to obtain this?

Best wishes/Håkan

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

Maybe on ozon.ru
http://www.ozon.ru/context/detail/id/3759327/

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

Thanks for the pointer.
However, I might be stupid but I can't find a way to get in contac with the seller. I end up in some window were I must register and this page isn't possibl to translate with google translator...

Best wishes/Håkan

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

To obtain books from Russia is not easy and simple thing! They are using such not Western system of selling, that I can not undrestand this.

Books, which I have I am buying from distributors, who have contacts with Russia, not from direct sellers.

In this way I can not help about obtaining books form Russia, there are very nice titles but distribution of them are from them "Moon".

Abrasov's book (only in Russia) has two edition, second is a little bit improved and worsened (some thing were removed from 1-st edition, correction were added to the second). Second edition was printed in 2008 by Yuza - Eksmo editor. So it should be still in bookstores?

Regards
mw

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

Dear Håkan

if you are interested in victories of Soviet pilots in Spain you won't find much in S. Abrasov: Air War in the Spain (Абросов, Сергей Владимирович: Воздушная война в Испании. Хроника воздушных сражений 1936-1939 гг., Издатель: Яуза, Эксмо, 2008). Unfortunately. The Ukrainian book Oleg Kaminskii: They call them Spanish (Каминский, Олег Александрович: Их называли «испанцами», Издательство: Друк, Одесса, Украина, 2009, http://airaces.narod.ru/spane/spane1.htm ) is much better for this purpose. I warmly recommend.

Best regards
JAN

Re: Soviet victory claims before 22 VI 1941?
 

If your interested in Abrasov's book or Kamiskiy's book contact Viktor Kulikov. He can probably find them in Moscow. He's found some out of print books for me there and you pay through paypal.