[Broncazonk]

~ Summary of Part I and II ~

For the first 113-pages of the book, in every aerial combat that Lipfert describes, (sans the Russian weather reconnaissance aircraft,) with very few exceptions, once Lipfert got on the tail of a Russian aircraft, the other Russian aircraft in the formation fled the scene and disappeared. On the rare occasions where all the Russian aircraft did not flee the scene, Lipfert was able to shoot down a second aircraft.

Therefore, honest claiming Luftwaffe Experten would have found it very difficult to score 3, 4, 5, 6 victories against Russian beginners in a single mission. And Generaloberst Erhard Rauss was mostly correct. [The Russians] almost never did recover from the shock effect of the German fighters.

Once again, on May 29, 1944, Lipfert was flying his 496th combat mission with 117 confirmed victories before he learned that there were Russians in his combat zone who could fly as well as he could. On that day, he was engaged by four (4) aggressive Airacobras in a 4 vs. 2 dogfight that did not flee, that could fly well, and he could not handle. "Several Airacobras jumped us from above and gave us such a scare that it was not until the flight home that I really recovered my senses." On the third sortie of that day (498th combat mission) Lipfert writes, "But once again we didn't even reach the front. All I saw was Airacobras above. Once again they forced us to flee. [...] I was furious when I landed. Never before had the Russians simply not allowed me to get into attack position."

And, during all this time, if Lipfert wasn't flying directly over a set of railroad tracks, he was mostly lost. He had to be--and was--exceedingly careful in the air.

Also--and this is a key point--on almost every single mission there were only two (2) German aircraft in the engagement. There couldn't be a "turkey shoot" on any given day.

Furthermore, The Bf-109 G was not an ideal fighter aircraft, to say the least. Lipfert writes that they were hard to see out of, they didn't stay in the air for long and they were hard to take-off and difficult to land.

Bronc