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Unresponsive VVS.
Richard Simpkin in "Deep Battle: the Brainchild of Marshal Tukhachevskii", published in 1987, wrote on page 64;
"Despite its lavish army aviation resources, the Red/Soviet Army never seems to have come near to achieving the speed and intimacy of fixed-wing air support which the Wehrmacht possessed, and the Western Allies developed ..... The reasons for this shortcoming are twofold. One factor (which also affects artillery support) is that a request for additional support coming up from a subordinate commander was - and apparently and astonishingly still is - a one-way ticket to the nearest penal battalion. The second reason is organisational. Although the control organisation for tactical aviation is capable of putting out a tactical headquarters to army and tentacles to division, resources are concentrated in the air army under the control of front, and are not normally farmed out on an on-call basis".
Mindful of the Red Army's adoption of 'Auftragstaktik' when switching to Tukhachevskii's Deep Operation Theory in 1942, I share Simpkin's astonishment that the VVS and artillery should have remained under the failed practice of 'Befehlstaktik'.
Did Simpkin miss something?
Tony
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