659 IAP KOLDUNOV

[Paul Thompson]

Gabor, thanks again!

I’ve tracked down where I took the information about Boston night-fighters from. It’s on page 84 of Osprey’s “Soviet Lend-Lease Fighter Aces”, which says that 26 and 27 GAPI-DDs (Guards Air Regiment – Long Range Fighter) used A-20G-1s with Gneis-3 radar as night fighters. There is no reference to Breslau in that book, so I must have read that somewhere else, I’ll try to track that down. Did the Soviets use any night fighters at all over Budapest?

I was aware that the Soviet torpedo-bomber units ‘de-modified’ their Bostons, didn’t know the same was the case for bomber units. Soviet A-20Js and Ks must have been extremely rare, as your data shows. I’ve found that they received 665 A-20Bs and 1441 A-20Gs, so these were the dominant models.

The work you are doing is great, and I have the highest respect for it! It’s also good to know that the Russian archives are opening up to some extent, even if they have a bad reputation in the West, it is indeed a credit to them. I hope you can keep sharing information here, it is great to be able to access your knowledge! For my part, I’ll organise the notes I’ve got from that book and send them to you, I hope they can add a small bit of information.

Regards,

Paul Thompson

[Paul Thompson]

Originally Posted by John Beaman

Very good work Paul and Gabor! This kind of posting(s) is what this board is all about. You are both to be commended.

BTW are you related to Eva?

John, thanks for the kind words! May I take the opportunity to ask if there is a way of archiving the contents of a thread on this forum to a PC hard disk? I'd like to be able to access this sort of information off-line, but saving the thread as an html produces a very cumbersome result.

Regards,

Paul Thompson

[HGabor]

I am not aware of any dedicated soviet night-fighter unit in the Budapest area. Maybe because the Axis night activity was so limited, it did not make it necessary. Po-2 biplane night-bombers and A-20 Boston daylight bombers equally were active in the night, but they were regular bombers, not spec. modified planes for pursue. Soviet searchlight and AAA units were very effective against the Axis night cargo-planes, so they did the job.

Gabor

[Paul Thompson]

Hello Gabor,

That's interesting, so all the 150 or so Ju 52s lost resupplying Budapest were lost to AAA and technical reasons? I thought night fighters would have been involved because the Axis losses were so great. Did the Bostons fly many missions at night, or only harassment sorties?

I've been sent a short set of notes about the Hungary fighting from another Russian-language source, a 2008 book by Isaev. He didn't write much about aviation, apparently, but there a couple of interesting bits of data:

1. On 3rd January 1945, Axis aircraft attacked the 18th Tank Corps and inflicted significant losses. They destroyed 6 T-34 and 2 ISU-152 of the 110th Tank Brigade and 5 more T-34 of the 181st Tank Brigade.

2. On 18th January 1945, 718 sorties were flown by 17 VA, 547 of those by fighters and Il-2s. There were 48 air combats, with 19 Bf 109 and 18 Fw 190 claimed destroyed. Isaev states by way of comparison that the grand total of 17 VA air combats for the entire month of January was 327.

Regards,

Paul Thompson

[HGabor]

Hi Paul,

No, several Ju 52s were shot down by soviet daylight fighters in the first part of January, 1945. Also, many were lost due to shelling of the landing zones, or during night (Boston) bombing of their home base, accidents, etc.

Both January 3 and 18, 1945 were brutal days for the 17 VA:

On January 3, 1945 they lost 13 IL-2, 3 La-5 (2 La-5F and a La-5FN), 8 Yak-9, 1 Yak-1b (S/n: 22167) and a Po-2 (S/n: 3984).

On January 18, 1945 they lost 2 Bostons, 15 IL-2, 2 La-5FN, 1 Yak-9T (S/n: 1815361).

(-All serials, crews, details known-)

Gabor

[Paul Thompson]

Originally Posted by HGabor

Hi Paul,

No, several Ju 52s were shot down by soviet daylight fighters in the first part of January, 1945. Also, many were lost due to shelling of the landing zones, or during night (Boston) bombing of their home base, accidents, etc.

Both January 3 and 18, 1945 were brutal days for the 17 VA:

On January 3, 1945 they lost 13 IL-2, 3 La-5 (2 La-5F and a La-5FN), 8 Yak-9, 1 Yak-1b (S/n: 22167) and a Po-2 (S/n: 3984).

On January 18, 1945 they lost 2 Bostons, 15 IL-2, 2 La-5FN, 1 Yak-9T (S/n: 1815361).

(-All serials, crews, details known-)

Gabor

Hello Gabor,

Thank you again for the comprehensive information! I didn't imagine the Axis took the risk of daylight sorties. Could you give an approximate figure of how many Ju 52s were lost in air combat? I'm particularly interested in this because Bykov's listing of Soviet ace victories indicates that they claimed quite a few Ju 52s in 1945.

The Il-2 losses stand out, just like in the figures for 14th March. There's information in the 2009 book about the causes of their losses in January:
50 - AAA, 53 - fighters, 14 - failed to return. As with the Bostons, this doesn't say much for the quality of Soviet escorts. Another statistic is that out of the 12000 daylight sorties by 17 VA in January, half were flown by Il-2s, so the losses were not too heavy overall.

There is another interesting issue with Soviet equipment. Were the La-5F rare examples? I think they must have been produced in 1943.

Regards,

Paul Thompson

[HGabor]

Paul,

I do not even attempt to figure the Ju 52 losses due to several factors:

1. tons of papers lost
2. Overclaims by soviet air units or in fact shared, therefore doubled claims
3. Doubled claims between air and AAA units.

You are right, fighter escort performance was not the best, in fact there are investigation papers on fighters leaving their big friends over the front line, missing them by miscalculated time and place, leaving them in dangerous situations. Fighters were much more successful in free-hunt.

I also do not attempt to guess the cause of the IL-2 losses. It's messy again. Do not forget IL-2s were flying tanks with tons of steel. Only chance was to down them to hit the coolant in their belly, so fighters usually attacked from below. Having said that surviving IL-2 crews usually did not even see the enemy fighters, only felt the explosion below, thinking it was AAA. So on the Axis side there are many fighter claims, wheras on the soviet side reports usually mention AAA, - not fighters. In combined cases where AAA damaged planes were finished off by enemy fighters it is up to you how you calculate it. So I would be shocked to see two independent statistics showing the same numbers.... Finally: yes, old La-5F was still very popular in both 5 and 17 VA in 1945. (No technology was wasted, they used them as long as they could for max. effort.)

Eg.: In the 2 divisions (6 La-5 regiments plus 18 OUTAP) of 17 VA:

January 1, - February 1, - March 1, 1945:

La-5F : 97 - 91 - 58
La-5FN: 162 - 141 - 125

ЦАМО, фонд 35, опись 11258, дело 349, страница 7
ЦАМО, фонд 35, опись 11258, дело 349, страница 40
ЦАМО, фонд 35, опись 11258, дело 349, страница 63

Gabor

[Juha]

Hello Gabor
IMHO Il-2 wasn't that difficult to shoot down. Firstly the rear fuselage and outer wings were wooden construction and so suspectible to damage by HE ammo, especially to German Minen shells. So one tactic was just shoot at the rear fuselage and tail with MG 151. Other was a side attack at little above and aiming at the wing root/fuselage just above the wing root. There was a good chance that MG 151 AP rounds could penetrate the side armour ending up into the fuel tank under cockpit, which was not originally self-sealing. IIRC the first Il-2 trial batch (100) with self-sealing fuel tanks arrived at front in Aug 43.
Il-2 was a hard nut, especially to those planes without cannon armament, but with cannon and right tactic it wasn't an impossible target.

Juha

[HGabor]

Thanks Juha for the details. Sure it was not impossible to bring them down, - the number of lost planes speak for themselves. But it is a fact that many times the IL-2 crews did not even see their opponents, only felt the explosion of the radiator, thinking it was flak.
Cheers,

Gabor

[Paul Thompson]

Hello Gabor,

I understand your reasoning about the Axis losses. However, I’ve just found the following link, which completely contradicts my vague memory of 150 Ju 52s lost. Can you comment on the data?

http://www.wiki.luftwaffedata.co.uk/...title=Budapest
“Losses incurred by the Transport units
36 Ju 52/3ms
7 He111Hs
1 Ju 87
1 Do 17
12 Gliders plus 36 abandoned after landing in the enclave (either at the racetrack or at the park).”

Thank you for the information about investigations into escort procedures. Did the Soviets make any significant changes as a result? I get the impression from examples like the Prokhorovka investigation that these sorts of investigations often failed to lead to any changes in procedures.

I agree that it’s impossible to determine after the fact what led to a particular aircraft loss. I think the statistics are interesting in as far as they are an official admission of significant losses to fighters. Avoiding Il-2 losses to fighters was a major focus of the VVS at this stage of the war, so this makes the data significant, showing that the fighter threat was too large to ignore or re-label as losses to AAA.

The large numbers of La-5F could be one of the reasons why the 17 VA had problems, they were clearly too old to fight the Bf 109G-10 or other late-war Axis fighters. I’ve noticed a very sharp decline in La-5 strength, from 259 to 183 in 2 months. Am I correct to assume this was largely due to combat losses?

Here’s an article to follow the points made by you and Juha. It is about Il-2 survivability, as far as I can gather, but I’d be glad if you could tell me more, Google Translate only goes so far! See link, click on forward arrows to see further parts:

http://vadimvswar.narod.ru/ALL_OUT/A...IL2Expl001.htm

Regards,

Paul Thompson