659 IAP KOLDUNOV

[Paul Thompson]

Hello Gabor,

Thank you again for taking the time to share your information!

Do you think the new fighters like the Yak-3 made things significantly worse for the Axis air forces? The Soviet and Russian sources that I have been able to access tend to emphasise the performance of their new types, yet there are still plenty of mentions of Axis aircraft escaping in a dive or using engine boost, which suggests the German types retained a performance margin.

I understand that many things will be forever unknown because of the loss of documentary evidence, but I get the impression that the claims for ‘Doras’ and ‘Condors’ can be largely discarded, because there is no mention of such planes operating in Austria or Hungary in 1945. Thank you for pointing out that Veselovskii was flying a Yak-9U, that shows how inconsistent the myth-making is! Were there many other Yak-9U units in the area at the time?

The information about the combats in early March is very interesting. Do I understand you correctly, only 1 Yak-3 and 1 Bf 109G were lost in the combats involving Yak-3s across the 2 days? Perhaps the Soviet claims were high because they felt the need to compensate for the heavy Boston losses. You are right that the fighting was heavy, a modern Russian book on the battle reports the loss of 165 Soviet tanks and self-propelled guns in 10 days of fighting around Balaton. Considering it claims German losses of “around 250”, the quoted Soviet losses may even be an underestimate.

Regards,

Paul Thompson