All language subtitles for Soviet.Storm.WWII.in.the.East.Series.2.3of9.The.Air.War.1080p.WEB-DL.h264.AC3.MVGroup.Forum_[eng]

Hitler s invasion catches
the Soviet air force off-guard.

The German Luftwaffe is
experienced and well equipped.

For Soviet pilots, the war
starts as a fight for survival.

Originally produced
for Russian television in 2011,

this is the story of Russia s
Great Patriotic War

and the Red Army s long road
from defeat to victory.

The first day of the war.

Two Messerschmitt 109s were on
the tail of a damaged Soviet
Seagull fighter.

Suddenly, another Seagull
appeared behind the two German
fighters.

The Germans left the damaged
plane and went after the new
arrival.

They put several holes through
the Soviet aircraft, but were
unable to shoot it down.

This Seagull was flown by
Lieutenant Rechkalov. This was
his baptism of fire.

Grigory Rechkalov shot down his
first German aircraft five days
later.

He went on to score
61 victories,

making him the third
highest-scoring Soviet ace of
the war.

He was twice decorated as a Hero
of the Soviet Union the USSR s
highest award.

A medical board had declared
Rechkalov unfit for combat,
because of colour-blindness.

But when he reported to his
regiment, the war had just
begun,

and he was immediately
pressed into service.

In 1941, the main Soviet
fighters were the I-153 Seagull,
and the I-16.

They were designed by the
Polikarpov Bureau, led by
Nikolai Nikolaevich Polikarpov.

The Seagull had a
tight turning circle,

but it was painfully slow
compared to the German
Messerschmitt-109.

Soviet pilots first encountered
the 109 during the Spanish Civil
War.

It was immediately clear
that it posed a serious threat.

The Messerschmitt 109 was
designed by Willy Messerschmitt

of the Bayerische
Flugzeugwerke company.

It would become the most
produced fighter of the war.

By June 1941, the latest "F"
variant had a top speed of 390
miles per hour,

compared to the Seagull s
266 miles per hour.

Its two machineguns
and one 20 millimetre cannon

meant the 109 was also
more heavily armed.

The manoeuvrability of the
Seagull meant Soviet pilots could
often escape,

but they could never
fight on their own terms.

On the first day of the war,
more than 300 Soviet aircraft
were shot down,

but as many as 1,400
were destroyed on the ground.

The worst losses were in
Byelorussia, where General
Chernykh s 9th Air Division,

equipped with new Mig-3s,
lost 347 of its 409 aircraft.

Sergei Aleksandrovich Chernykh
was a Hero of the Soviet Union,

a veteran of the Spanish Civil
War and the first Soviet pilot

to shoot down a
Messerschmitt 109.

But now he became a scapegoat
for the air force s failures,
and was arrested and shot.

The Western Front lost 738
aircraft, 528 of them on the
ground.

When the Air Force Commander
in Byelorrusia, General Kopets,

realised the scale of the
disaster, he shot himself.

These men were talented young
pilots who d been rapidly
promoted to high command,

to fill the vacuum created by
Stalin s purge of senior air
force officers.

But when war came,
they were out of their depth.

Despite the enormous
losses of the first day,

the remnants of the Soviet Air
Force began to fight back.

On 25th June, 27 Soviet Tupolev
SB bombers attacked the German
2nd Panzer Group,

as it massed to cross the
Shchara River in Byelorussia.

The bombers destroyed vehicles
and took out the river-crossing.

On the way back the SBs were
attacked by German fighters.

10 were shot down.

Soviet ground attack and fighter
regiments were under army
command,

but bombers were under Front
or Army Group command.

It proved almost impossible
to co-ordinate their actions.

Bombers attacked
without fighter protection,

while fighters were ordered
to attack ground targets.

Poor Soviet tactics
were also being exposed.

Bomber pilots had been trained
to fly in loose formations,

meaning their machineguns
couldn t cover each other.

Soviet tactics and organisation
needed a rapid overhaul.

Nevertheless, Soviet bombers
continued to attack German
ground forces,

as well as strategic targets
including Koenigsberg in East
Prussia, Warsaw,

the Romanian port of Konstanza,
and the Ploesti oil refineries.

One of the pilots defending
the vital Romanian oil fields

was Oberleutnant Günther Rall.

On 26th June, his unit
intercepted Soviet bombers
returning from a raid on
Ploesti.

Rall shot down three bombers.
His fellow pilots destroyed 6
more.

Gunther Rall enlisted
in the infantry in 1936.

Two years later he transferred
to the Luftwaffe to train as a
fighter pilot.

He first saw action over France
in 1940, where he scored two
victories.

He ended the war as Germany s
third most successful fighter
pilot,

with 275 kills to his name.

German pilots not only had the
advantage of superior aircraft

they also had
excellent training.

They followed the maxim of the
legendary First World War
fighter ace,

the Red Baron himself,
Manfred von Richthofen:

Find the enemy and shoot him
down; anything else is
nonsense.

German fighter pilots fought
almost a separate war

more like an athletic contest,
in which only their individual
scores mattered.

Drawing on their experience
of the Spanish Civil War,

Luftwaffe fighter pilots
had invented their own tactics.

They flew in a flexible
formation made up of two pairs,

known as the finger four, which
allowed them to utilise their
superior speed.

Other air forces, including the
British and Soviet, flew in
rigid V-shaped formations,

in which pilots spent most of
their time concentrating on
holding position.

In the Soviet case,
a tight formation was essential,

because most aircraft
did not yet have radios.

Section leaders had to
communicate by waggling their
wings or using hand signals.

It left the pilots
with no freedom to manoeuvre.

In the weeks leading up
to the German invasion,

a brand new aircraft began to
arrive at Soviet ground attack
regiments.

It was the Il-2, and it would
become the most famous Soviet
aircraft of the war.

The Il-2 Shturmovik was designed
by Sergei Ilyushin, and entered
service in May 1941.

His creation was soon
nicknamed "the flying tank".

The Il-2 carried cannon,
machineguns, bombs and rockets,

and was protected from ground
fire by armour-plating.

More than 36,000 were
eventually built,

making it the most produced
military aircraft in history.

The first unit to receive the
Il-2 was the 4th Shturmovik
Regiment.

But the war began before its
pilots had had a chance to train
with it.

They d practiced
take-offs and landings,

but hadn t flown in formation or
even fired the aircraft s
weapons yet.

Some of the pilots had never
seen an RS rocket before,

and now they were expected
to use them in combat.

On 27th June, pilots
Spitsyn, Filippov,

and Kholobayev flew off on
their first mission.

They attacked a German column
from low altitude.

They could only use
their machineguns,

since the 20 millimetre cannon
had a production defect.

All the pilots returned to the
airfield. Kholobayev s plane was
riddled with holes.

The fuselage was
covered with oil.

The aircraft was a write-off.
But he had survived.

A week later, the regiment
received a citation from the
Front commander

for destroying 9 crossings over
the Berezina River. But losses
were high.

By mid-July, of the regiment s
56 aircraft, only 10 remained in
service.

In August the regiment handed
its last 3 aircraft to a
neighbouring unit,

and headed east for rebuilding.

In the first summer of the war,

an Ilyushin 2 was destroyed on
average after just 8 or 9
missions.

In some regiments,
after just 3 or 4.

But better tactics and training
would gradually improve these
survival rates.

By 1945, the average
had gone up to 90 missions.

That autumn, Grigory Rechkalov
was wounded during a combat
mission.

Despite serious leg injuries, he
managed to land his aircraft
back at base.

By then, his score stood
at 3 German aircraft destroyed.

By the end of 1941 the Soviet
air force had lost more than
20,000 aircraft

the Luftwaffe just 3,800.

But despite this success,
the Luftwaffe proved unable

to effectively target Soviet
transport and infrastructure.

The Luftwaffe had been designed
primarily to support ground
operations.

It lacked the aircraft
to carry out strategic bombing.

The Luftwaffe was unable to
prevent the evacuation of Soviet
industry

to the Urals, or, crucially,
prevent Red Army reinforcements

moving up from the
Russian interior.

German air raids against Moscow
underlined this weakness.

Soviet fighters, supported by
formidable anti-aircraft
defences,

were able to prevent any
serious damage to the capital.

By the winter counterattack,
the Soviet air force outnumbered

the Luftwaffe by almost
3 to 1. And soon,

it would start to receive some
desperately-needed modern
aircraft...

Above an airfield in Russia,
an aircraft slowed,

began to shudder,
and then fell into a spin.

Down below, its designer, Semyon
Lavochkin, feared the worst.

The day before he d told the
pilots, Don t test it for
tailspin.

You ll destroy the prototype
and yourselves.

But the pilot quickly recovered
and returned to level flight.

Two weeks later, the State
Defence Committee approved
production

of the LaGG-3 fighter
with a new M-82 engine.

It would be called... the La-5.

Its predecessor, the LaGG-3, was
designed in 1940 by Lavochkin,
Gorbunov, and Gudkov.

Because of the USSR s shortage
of aluminium, the aircraft had a
wooden airframe,

with key sections made
from a wood veneer

that was treated with Bakerlite
and compressed at high
temperature.

This made the wood
very strong and fire-resistant.

But it was heavy
compared to aluminium.

Its weight and an underpowered
engine made the LaGG-3 sluggish
and unmanoeuvrable.

In the autumn of 1941 it was
decided to cease production of
LaGG fighters

and concentrate
instead on the Yak-7.

In late 1941, the Yak-7B was
considered the best Soviet
fighter.

It was armed with one cannon
and two machineguns,

and had a top speed of
365 miles per hour.

The Lavochkin Design
Bureau faced closure.

Its saviour was a new, more
powerful M-82 air-cooled engine.

Installed in the LaGG-3
airframe, it gave birth to the
LA-5,

and the Lavochkin Bureau
was back in business.

On 21st March 1942, a few days
before the Bureau was evacuated
to the Caucasus,

test pilot Vasily Mishchenko
took the prototype for its first
flight.

In the first year of the war,
the Soviets had lost huge
swathes of territory,

and suffered devastating losses.

Of 22,600 tanks available at the
start of the war, about 2,000
were left.

From 20,000 aircraft,
just 2,000.

And of 110,000 guns
and mortars, 2,800.

These losses had to
be made good quickly,

but at the same time Soviet
factories had to be evacuated
east to safety.

The People s Commissariat
of Aviation Industry

had evacuated 118 factories,
85% of its facilities.

9 major tank plants
were evacuated.

By the end of 1941,
more than 10 million people

and 2,500 enterprises
had been relocated.

The task required more
than 1.5 million rail-wagons.

On arrival, most factories
resumed production immediately.

The Soviet Air Force, meanwhile,
was putting into practice the
painful lessons of 1941.

In March 1942, the air force
received a new commander,
General Novikov.

He immediately recommended that
its units be concentrated into
"air armies",

making it easier to manage
and co-ordinate air operations.

Soviet fighter pilots
learnt new tactics,

some drawn from combat
experience, others borrowed from
the Luftwaffe.

The air force abandoned
its "mixed air groups".

Instead, fighters, shturmoviks
and bombers were formed into
specialised divisions.

Obsolete aircraft
such as the Seagull

were gradually replaced by new
Yaks, Lavochkins, and Ilyushins.

The La-5 made its debut
in August 1942, over Stalingrad.

Gunther Rall gave his assessment
of the new aircraft:

The Russians were
quick learners.

The La-5, based on the
inefficient LaGG-3, was a great
plane.

All German pilots soon learned
to respect the La-5.

It had particularly impressive
performance at low-altitude,

where it could out-turn a
Messerschmitt 109, and outclimb
a Focke Wulf 190.

However, the Soviets continued
to suffer heavy pilot losses.

The situation was described in a
report by the 49th Fighter
Regiment.

The La-5 is the best type
of Soviet fighter.

The regiment s losses are
explained by the fact that 45%
of personnel are young pilots.

Casualties included 3 sergeants
with 15 to 17 flying hours on
La-5s,

and two lieutenants
with similar background.

Only one in five is an
experienced pilot.

Pilot training would remain one
of the Soviet Air Force s
greatest failings

until the end of the war.

Soviet flight schools suffered
from a shortage of instructors,
and of fuel.

Pilots graduated after just
90 days of basic instruction.

They concentrated on take-offs
and landings.

Acrobatics were strictly
forbidden, because they led to
too many accidents.

As a result, pilots often
arrived at their unit

with as little as 8 hours
flying experience often,

none of it on the aircraft
the unit was equipped with.

Nor had they been trained
how to fly in bad weather.

Flight school graduates received
virtually no instruction in air
combat.

Most had done some
target-shooting.

But few knew much about
deflection shooting or how to
use their gun sights.

These men were expected
to fight German pilots

with hundreds of combat missions
under their belt.

But what they lacked in
experience, they made up for in
spirit.

Sergey Gorelov typified the
commitment of Soviet fighter
pilots:

We were eager for battle
and ready to die in combat.

We even said our goodbyes
before going on a mission.

In late 1942, Grigory
Rechkalov s regiment

was withdrawn from the front in
order to retrain on new
aircraft:

American Airacobras,
sent to the USSR

as part of the Allied Lend-Lease
programme of military aid.

Of all the types of Allied
aircraft supplied through
Lend-Lease,

this was the pilots favourite.

The Bell P-39 Airacobra
had one unusual design feature

the engine was situated behind
the pilot. Half of the 10,000
Airacobras

built by Bell were sent to the
Soviet Union under the terms of
Lend-Lease.

The aircraft carried a 37
millimetre cannon and two heavy
calibre machineguns.

Besides Rechkalov, other
Airacobra pilots included
Nikolay Guliayev,

the fourth highest-scoring
Soviet ace with 57 confirmed
kills,

and Aleksandr Pokryshkin,
the third highest with 59 kills.

Rechkalov, who liked to hunt
alone in his Airacobra, won 42
victories in 1943.

He finished the war
with 61 confirmed victories.

By the war s end, Rechkalov had
twice been decorated as a Hero
of the Soviet Union.

In April 1943, the Red
Army s North Caucasus Front

began an offensive against the
Kuban Bridgehead, on the Black
Sea Coast.

Their aim was to break through
the German fortification system

known as the Blue Line,
and to liberate Taman.

After 6 days of fierce fighting,
the 56th Army had succeeded in
capturing

just one German stronghold,
the village of Krymskaya.

Any further Red Army
advance became impossible

in the face of massive
German air strikes,

launched from Luftwaffe
bases in the Kerch Peninsula.

The Soviet offensive had to
be called off on 15th May.

That summer, a vicious struggle
for air superiority raged over
the Kuban Bridgehead.

On one side, the Soviet 4th Air
Army under General Vershinin,

on the other, Field Marshal
von Richthofen s 4th Air Fleet.

It would prove the beginning of
the end for Luftwaffe supremacy
on the Eastern Front.

The Soviet Union s top ace
was Ivan Nikitovich Kozhedub.

Kozhedub spent two years
as a flight instructor,

and only joined a frontline
fighter regiment in the spring
of 1943,

where he flew La-5s.
By the end of the war,

he had shot down
62 enemy aircraft,

making him the highest-scoring
Allied ace of the war.

He was also a three-times
Hero of the Soviet Union.

In his first 40 missions,
Kozhedub failed to shoot down
any enemy aircraft.

Instead, he often returned with
his own plane badly damaged.

But his chance would come
at the Battle of Kursk.

In the summer of
1943, near Kursk,

the Wehrmacht planned
a massive two-pronged offensive

that would lead to the
encirclement and destruction of
substantial Red Army forces.

The Red Army had never before
withstood the combined German
assault of tanks,

artillery and aircraft.

Kholobayev, meanwhile,
was instructing young pilots

of the 7th Guards
Shturmovik Regiment.

Above all, Kholobayev extolled
the virtues of aggression in his
pilots.

He urged them to attack
without hesitation.

By 1943, Soviet shturmovik
regiments had developed tactics

based on solid
combat experience.

They began with a nosedive from
3000 feet, to just a few
hundred.

Then they would form a circle.

This formation gave them
freedom to manoeuvre,

select their ground targets,
and engage them with cannon,

machineguns, bombs and rockets.

As they made their attack,

the aircraft following behind
protected them from German
fighters.

Just before the battle of Kursk,

IL-2 units received a new
anti-tank weapon, the PTAB
aerial bomb.

Grigory Cherkashyn was one pilot
to use the new weapon:

PTABs are our best weapon
against tanks. They re a beast!

6 Shturmoviks approach
an armoured column.

The first unloads its four
hatches, then the second, then
the third

The Germans unleashed their
Kursk offensive on 5th July
1943.

The next day Kozhedub shot down
his first German aircraft.

Over the next 2 days,
he shot down 3 more.

In one battle, Lieutenant
Gorovets was credited with
destroying nine Stukas

the last by ramming it before
his heavily damaged LA-5 was
shot down.

At the cost of his own life,
Aleksandr Konstantinovich
Gorovets

set a Soviet record of
destroying 9 enemy aircraft in a
single mission.

The exact number of aircraft
shot down by the World War Two
aces

remains the subject
of heated debate.

The nature of air combat
made it difficult to be sure

if an aircraft had been
shot down or just damaged.

The Soviet air force,
like all others,

required victories to be
corroborated by witnesses in the
air or on the ground,

or for kills to be confirmed
by gun-camera footage.

But pilots on all sides
were prone to exaggerate

the number of aircraft
they d shot down.

In the Battle of
Britain, for instance,

fighter pilots claimed for about
twice as many aircraft as were
actually shot down.

At Kursk, the air battle raged
with as much ferocity as the
fighting on the ground.

One thing was clear the
Luftwaffe no longer had things
all its own way.

Experienced German aces, flying
high-performance modern
aircraft,

continued to exact a heavy toll
on the Soviet Air Force.

But Sergey Gorelov exemplified
the Soviet learning curve:

By Kursk I d learned how to
manoeuvre and shoot accurately.

Now we had reliable radios
and ground control.

I destroyed one plane
in 1941, five in 1942,

and in the summer
of 1943 twenty.

The Lavochkin fighter played an
important role in his success.

In 1943 it received a new engine
with direct fuel injection,

which made it a solid match for
the latest Messerschmitt 109.

On 3rd August, Gorelov and nine
other La-5 pilots were escorting
Shturmoviks

to their target, when they were
jumped by 35 enemy fighters.

In the ensuing dogfight, 8
Messerschmitts were shot down,
two of them by Gorelov.

When attacking a formation of
Soviet shturmoviks and fighter
escorts,

German fighters would climb
500 metres above them.

There they would circle, waiting
for the optimum moment to make a
diving attack.

Their plan was simple:
strike at maximum speed,

take out a shturmovik,
and then climb away to safety.

These high-speed diving attacks
were made at more than 400 miles
per hour.

The escort fighters orders
were to stay with the slower,

less manoeuvrable Shturmoviks,
and protect them from these
attacks.

They would turn to face the
attacking German aircraft and
open a defensive fire,

which, even if it missed, might
force him to break off his
attack.

The escort would then
rejoin the formation.

It could be a frustrating
experience for Soviet fighter
pilots,

forbidden to pursue and destroy
damaged enemy fighters.

German aces scored many
victories with these high-speed
diving attacks.

But there weren t enough of them
to prevent the Shturmoviks
carrying out their mission,

to bomb and strafe German
ground forces without mercy.

On 4th February 1944,
1st Lieutenant Kozhedub

was awarded the Gold Star
of a Hero of the Soviet Union,

for destroying 20 enemy aircraft
in 146 missions.

His comrade Sergey Kramarenko
described this exceptional
pilot:

Lots of pilots envied him,
thinking he must be really lucky.

Hitting so many planes without
being hit it s really rare.

But after flying with him a few
times, I realised that behind
the "luck",

lay lightning reactions and
excellent situational awareness.

Kozhedub had an instinctive
understanding of aerial combat.

He was always in the right place
at the right time.

Then all he had to do was push
the gun button.

In 1943 British
and American air forces launched

their Combined Bomber
Offensive against Germany.

The Casablanca Directive
stated its goals:

The progressive destruction and
dislocation of the German
military, industrial,

and economic system, and the
undermining of the morale of the
German people

to a point where their capacity
for armed resistance is fatally
weakened.

Germany was to be bombed
around the clock

the Americans attacking by day,
the British at night.

On the Eastern front German
pilots were able to hunt freely.

But against Allied bombers
and their fighter escorts,

they no longer had the option to
fight only on their own terms.

On two fronts, the Luftwaffe was
slowly being ground into
submission.

Shortly before dawn
on 23rd June 1944,

the alert was sounded at the 7th
Guards Shturmovik Regiment.

All personnel formed
up on the airfield.

The regiment had been completely
re-manned three times,

and the men who began the war
in Byelorussia were long gone.

Commander Kholobayev had been
promoted and transferred.

The men stood to attention:

a parade was being held to mark
the start of Operation
Bagration.

Operation Bagration, with
Shturmovik regiments in the
lead,

resulted in the destruction
of an entire German Army Group.

The Red Army had cracked
the Eastern Front wide open.

A commission had been sent
to assess the efficiency

of the 230th Ground Assault
Division, of which the 7th
Guards Regiment was a part.

They found that in one day, the
division destroyed more than 100
vehicles,

6 tanks, and 20 guns.

As the Germans retreated through
Byelorussia, traffic jams
formed,

particularly around
the river crossings.

With the Luftwaffe
nowhere to be seen,

the columns were at the mercy
of the Soviet Air Force.

In April 1945, the Soviet Air
Force prepared to support the
Red Army s final offensive,

across the Oder river
and into Berlin.

They would outnumber
the Luftwaffe almost 7 to 1,

but the German 6th Air Fleet
could be counted on to fight
desperately

in defence of the capital.

Three pairs of La-7s took off
to guard the crossings.

Ivan Kozhedub was in the lead.

Below them, they spotted 32
Focke-Wulf-190s flying in two
groups.

Kozhedub descended, slipped
under the German formation,

and attacked the lead aircraft.

A Focke-Wulf opened
fire on Kozhedub.

His wingman shot down the German
at almost point-blank range.

Using their speed, the Soviet
fighters climbed and attacked
the second enemy group.

Kozhedub destroyed
another plane.

Then, another. A dogfight began,
as pilots twisted and turned,

trying to get into a good firing
position on an enemy aircraft.

In spite of their superior
numbers, the Focke-Wulfs turned
tail and fled west,

pursued by the Lavochkins.

Back at base, the scores were
tallied up. Kozhedub had shot
down three aircraft,

getting away with a few
holes in his tail.

Gromakovsky had 2, and
Kumanitsky, Stetsenko and Orlov,
one each.

The once mighty Luftwaffe
had been chased from the sky,

and Soviet fighter pilots roamed
at will over the enemy s
capital.

Several became aces in the final
days of the war, amongst them,

Vladimir Gromakovsky who shot
down 5 aircraft during the
Berlin offensive,

and Viktor Aleksandriuk,
who claimed 7.

On the night of 9th May, pilots
woke to the sound of gunshots.

They sprung out of bed and raced
outside with their sidearms.

German regiments were still
trying to fight their way to the
West,

sometimes attacking
airfields on their path.

But the shots
were being fired into the air.

News had arrived of the German
unconditional surrender.

The war was finally over.

For the Soviet Air Force, it had
been a costly and bloody
struggle.

But from the devastating
defeats of 1941

had emerged a ruthless
and powerful air force,

that had played its full part
in the final Soviet victory.