[Mirek Wawrzynski]

"Answer is simple: because the Soviets did not report everything. Polish Campaign 1939 is a good example: some Soviet planes were downed by Polish fighters. Some of the Soviet aircrews were captured and interrogated but there is no trace in Soviet documents".

I know three such incidents. I wrote about them in detail in my 2008 book on the subject, "Red Stars - an Ally of Black Crosses over Poland", Warsaw 2008. One of these cases is very debatable. The Polish pilot wrote in the documents that he had fought in the air and shot down the "R-5", and years later he wrote in his memoirs that he did not shoot this Soviet plane, but flew around it and did not fire. There are documents - his manual report from 1939, and there are memoirs published years later. Who to believe now? The same person - pilot and diffferent time and place.

In the case of their losses, the Russians did not hide it at all, when they had losses, they would list them in documents; there is only a question of why the loss occurs. It was similar with Germany in 1939 or later. Such cases during the Second World War were not uncommon, the pilots said one thing, and then completely different turned out.

It is much easier and simpler to write: the Russians did not write in the report, the Russians are hiding. It's a regular mambo jumbo.

The plane is too expensive and the pilot and crew are also not ghosts to disappear from official military documentation. There is no such option, the military is a bureaucracy.

Staff - military bureaucracy - must love papers, i.e. writing reports, this is their basis of existence, production of reports, orders, etc.

R.
mirekw