You’re welcome, Gabor! It’s quite a coincidence that the article refers to one of the 2 Yak-9U losses you mentioned above.
You make a very significant point about transition time. Quite possibly the use of several types simultaneously made the maintenance situation worse and this also contributed to lower serviceability when the weather closed in. It must have been difficult to maintain the new engines Yak-9Us along with the old engines of the previous Yaks.
I see that the spring made heavy fighting possible, yet I would have expected that the Axis air forces would be overwhelmed by superior Soviet numbers. Instead, I’ve gained the impression from the data you provided that the Soviets had great difficulties in the air. On this topic, I’ve managed to dig up the total loss figures of 17 VA for January 1945 from the same notes I mentioned before. The losses were quite heavy – 241 aircraft: 47 La-5, 140 Il-2, 14 Bostons, 30 Yaks, 3 Pe-2 and 4 Po-2. Do you know the summary losses for March 1945? It would be very interesting to compare the two!
You are quite right to note that the Germans threw a large proportion of their remaining armour into the Balaton fighting. It is incredible that they did so in precisely the same area where they had conducted three separate Konrad offensives throughout January. I think that the Soviets would have suffered far more had the Germans been able to surprise them. For example, The SU-100 units were only made available in the area as a response to the January fighting, so the Germans made things much more difficult for themselves by not altering the offensive plan.
The link with photos is excellent! Do you think some of the tanks destroyed by air attack were hit by PTABs? I do not know how PTAB damage should look, so I am wondering if you have an idea. More generally, it seems that modern Russian historians like to display the results of the battle, because the book I keep referring to is full of various images of destroyed Axis equipment, which add to the ones you linked to. In fact, the images are the reason that I have the book, Google Translate doesn’t help much with reading a whole text! Here’s a link to the book’s description:
http://www.ozon.ru/context/detail/id/4556060/
Разгром 6-й танковой армии СС. Могила Панцерваффе
ISBN 978-5-699-34808-4; 2009 г.
Regards,
Paul Thompson