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Re: Was there ever any "official" Soviet history written covering Air Force operations during the brief Polish Campaign of Sept., 1939?
Hello Mirek,
Our main PC researcher has used your small, but valuable book, "Czerwone Gwiazdy – sojusznik czarnych krzyzy nad Polska” ("Red Stars-An Ally of Black Crosses over Poland"), Warszaw, 2008, as a reference, and we've already matched everything that we can against Polish and German records. From this and our own exhaustive research (1250 single-spaced typewritten pages just on the Polish side), we know that there was very little air-to-air combat, and very few a/c lost on either side in actions against the Soviets.
Obviously, with the entire surviving Polish Air Force evacuating to Romania on 17.09.39, that left almost no opportunity for combat with Polish air units. However, I'm thinking that there must have been some bombing and ground attack missions flown by the Soviets until the last resistance by Polish ground forces on the Eastern Front was overcome. Any Soviet losses during these missions would have been operational accidents or from flak. Do any records show what units dropped bombs against which targets and the dates? From your reply it appears that no significant Soviet records of these operations are known to have survived. You published the Soviet Air Order of Battle as of the beginning of this campaign, so that we at least know what Soviet air units were where when the campaign started. Since publication of your book, has any more information come to light on this subject?
Regarding photography, your book really had no really useful photos. Do you know of any surviving photos that would help us illustrate the Soviet side of the campaign, however brief and unexciting? Surely there were Soviet photographers operating with the air units at the time, although it's possible that very little or none of this photography has survived in the Russian archives. For our EoE project we are showing the daily mission tracks on our maps, plus a/c loss locations, for each day. Is there any hope of being able to add such information to the maps covering Soviet air operations?
Thanx for what you've already published, and I hope that you will share with us any additional information or photos that you might have acquired on this subject.
Does anyone else have anything to add to what Mirek has already done on this subject?
Regards,
Larry Hickey
EoE Project Coordinator
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