Soviet Air Force Air to air Claims WW2

[Frank Olynyk]

Santiago,

Mikhail Bykov published Vse Acy Stalina 1936-1953 (All Stalin's Aces) in 2014. It is 1392 pages long, and gives details on about 3500 Soviet aces; full name, year of birth, units served in, ranks, awards, victory lists. I do not know if it is still in print.

Just published a month ago, in English and German, is Waldemar Trojca's Soviet Union Air Aces 1941-1945. A4 size, 768 pages. Despite the title, this book covers basically all fighter pilot recipients of the award Hero of the Soviet Union. In four parts, those with 3 awards, those with 2 awards, those with 1 award, and a small group of those with only a lower award. It covers 381 pilots, not all of whom are aces. The paper is coated stock, with many photos and aircraft silhouettes. Short text for each entry, with date of birth and death, units served, types flown, awards, and a list of victories. It starts with 100 or so pages with details on the Soviet and German aircraft of the Great Patriotic War. Expensive.

Mikhail Bykov I believe is the main force behind a large web site attempting to document the Soviet aces. http://soviet-aces-1936-53.ru/ It is being built slowly, and gets regular updates. The entries here are substantial updates on his book.

He has a similar website which appears to be trying to do the same for the Soviet pilots with fewer than 5 victories. http://sovpilots.ru/menu_page.html
Both websites are in Russian. The second one is considerably smaller than the first. I mirror both of them monthly. The first one also has a large hidden collection of material on Soviet WW2 snipers, which I haven't been able to figure out how to access (or how to not mirror, since I am not interested in snipers).

Someone ought to translate Bykov's book into English and publish it. It "should" be easy, since there is very little actual Russian text. "should" is the key word of course. And if someone does translate and publish it, I really hope Mikhail sees substantial royalties.

And perhaps this thread belongs under "Books and Magazines".

Enjoy!

Frank.