[Graham Boak]

Statements that 2TAF was somehow deficient in speed and effectiveness do not seem to reflect the contemporary opinions on the troops on the ground, but post-war manoeuvring for funds and squabbles among theorists over "ownership". It should be pointed out that the Army has many tools of its own for dealing with enemy AT guns and machine guns, such as mortars, tanks, and artillery, without necessarily calling on rare and expensive assets such as aircraft at every stumbling block.

There seems to be considerable difference in appreciation of the difference between what nowadays are termed called Close Air Support and Battlefield Interdiction. The former is definitely dependent upon good radio contact with the forward troops: if this was lacking in the early years of the Great Patriotic War then there is no way that good CAS could be practised, and the most efficient use of ground-attack aircraft was in Battlefield Interdiction. This involves attacking targets behind the front line such as headquarters, supply dumps, mobile forces and supply lines such as roads and railways. This is largely dependent upon good intelligence, but where such supply lines are few and spaces open, good results can be obtained even without this.

Of course, the successes obtained this way are largely invisible to the troops on the ground, and therefore ignored by critics of airpower to whom only aircraft seen directly overhead actually count.

It's not clear to me how the Soviet approach differs in principle from Western air force tactical operations. Beyond the tactical area, however, the near-complete lack of operations at any distance from the front permitted much more freedom of movement for the Germans in re-organising to reduce the effect of breakthroughs. In this case the Western forces had the luxury of an extra weapon not available to their Soviet or German counterparts.