[Boomerang]

Jim:

I believe the general picture at that time and place was that the Luftwaffe had acheived air supremacy over the VVS by virtue of qualitative (aircraft and pilots) and quantitative superiority.

If you want further information, I suggest that Stopped at Stalingrad by Joel Hayward gives a good description of the air war over the southern part of the Russian front from early 1942 to January 1943, including the battles in the Crimea, Stalingrad and the Caucacus. Told from the Luftwaffe point of view, but certainly plenty of descriptions of VVS operations and lots of primary references.

In fairness to the VVS, the Soviets had been pushed back literally hundreds of kilometres by the German summer offensive, so the VVS is likely to have been trying to maintain operations under all the duress of abandoning airfields, leaving behind unserviceable aircraft, trying to re-establish itself on new bases with inadequate infrastructure and so on.

Cheers

Boomerang