Libau 28 October 1944

[Paul Thompson]

Originally Posted by Andrew Arthy

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the response. I should emphasise that I'm only in the early stages of matching up the records of the two sides, and my German information is much more complete than my Soviet information.

That said, my loss figures come from the operational reports of 3.VA, plus the VVS KBF figures that Andrey Kuznetsov provided earlier in this thread, so there can be no doubt about them.

3.VA alone undertook 614 sorties on 28 October, so I'm not sure which units are referred to in the Osprey book.

Cheers,
Andrew A.
Air War Publications - www.airwarpublications.com

Hello Andrew,

You’re welcome. I hope that others can help you fill out the Russian side of the story!

I suspected that your data covered a broader set of events than the Pe-2 book, so I’ll provide the data from that book below for clarity:

10 October – 10 Pe-2 and 3 Yak-9 shot down, 5 of the Pe-2 crews killed, Capt Yuriy Kozhevnikov of 12 GvBAP landed behind enemy lines and was killed while crossing the frontline, his crew evaded successfully.

27 October 130 56 32 Losses 10 Results 1 tanker
28 October 142 70 25 Losses 7 Results 1 transport
30 October 148 68 30 Losses 15 Results 2 transports
14 December 175 83 27 Losses 16 Results 6 transports and 1 tanker
22 December 180 74 26 Losses 14 Results 3 transports
Totals 775 351 140 Losses 62 Results 12 transports and 2 tankers

The table is clearly incomplete, for example the 15 December raid is not mentioned at all. Do you have the numbers for 15 December, by any chance? Comparing the figures with Andrey’s post, I infer that the sorties and losses above refer only to VVS KBF missions, restricted to attacks on Liepaja on the dates mentioned in the report. Given these restrictions, the overall Soviet losses must have been much higher, as you described.

Regards,

Paul Thompson