Battle of Kursk - the Air Battle

Battle of Kursk by Nicolas Trudgian. (B)

On 5 July, 1943 over 6000 German and Russian tanks clashed near the town of Kursk, just 300 miles south of Moscow. It was the beginning of what became the greatest tank battle in history. In the skies above this conflagration, an air battle of monumental proportions raged, with the German and Russian air forces locked in combat. This was war on a scale hitherto never imagined. A full week later the Battle was still raging, reaching a crescendo on 12 July when Hoths 4th Panzer Army met head-on with Rotmistrovs 5th Guards Tank Army near the village of Prokhorovka. With the Russian T34s electing to fight at close quarters, so desperate was the fighting that opposing tanks resorted to ramming each other. As the battle moved across the landscape all became utter confusion. Playing a major role in the air were the Luftwaffes Ju-87 Stukas, equipped with massive 37mm cannons slung under their wings. Led by Hans-Ulrich Rudel, the legendary Stuka pilot, these formidable tank-busters made a significant contribution to the Battle of Kursk. Nicolas Trudgians painting records the dramatic events at Kursk in a spectacular rendition that captures the very essence of this mighty land and air battle. Dominating the scene are a pair of Ju-87s. Having knocked out two T34s, they weave over the landscape as they try to avoid the attentions of Russian Yak 9s, the gunner of Rudels aircraft - in the foreground - blazing away with his machine gun. A pair of Fw190s have entered the fray, and the air is filled with smoke and cordite. In a typically detailed Nicolas Trudgian landscape, below the aerial contest Russian and Panzer tanks are seen in close combat, desperately maneuvering to gain some advantage. The old farm buildings show the ravages of war; tank tracks crisscross the fields, stretching into the distance where the battle extends to the horizon. A masterpiece in military art.

Though the Battle of Kursk is rightly considered a tank engagement, the struggle in the skies was no less important. The Luftwaffe gave the panzer divisions excellent aerial support, but the Red Air Force was to prove the eventual master in the air.

The Luftwaffe commitment at the beginning of Operation Citadel was 1800 aircraft. This figure represented some two-thirds of the machines deployed on the entire Eastern Front. The bulk of this force was concentrated to support the southern pincer under VIII Air Corps commanded by General Otto Dessloch. A squadron commander during World War I, Dessloch had vast experience, having led various Luftwaffe units prior to the Kursk operation. Under Dessloch's leadership, VIII Air Corps controlled the flying units of 4th Air Fleet, 1st Hungarian Air Division and I FlaK (antiaircraft artillery) Corps, disposing a total of 1100 aircraft. Included amongst these flying formations were seven units of dive-bombers, the infamous Ju 87D Stuka.

The Stukas were expected to carry out their classic role, established during four years of war, as flying artillery plunging out of the skies to bomb and strafe the enemy immediately ahead of the panzer wedges. The near-vertical dive that preceded bomb release was accompanied by a howling wail, as the pilot aimed his aircraft at the target, a wail that froze the blood of the men on the ground, convincing them that they as individuals had been specially chosen for death.

Operation Citadel was the last time the Stuka would be employed in this manner, as its performance no longer matched the demands of the Eastern Front. When their dive-bomber role was rescinded, all the remaining Stukas were transferred to low-level ground-attack duties, and it was during the Kursk operation that Stuka "tank busters" were employed on a wide scale for the first time. A 37mm antitank gun was fitted under each wing, and this weight of fire in the hands of an expert such as Flight-Lieutenant Hans-Ulrich Rudel was to wreak havoc in the Soviet tank fleets. It is claimed that Rudel destroyed 12 tanks on the first day of Citadel alone.

Another first for the Luftwaffe at Kursk was the employment of Schlactsgeschwaders (ground-attack wings) utilizing Focke-Wulf Fw 190 A-4s and Henschel Hs 129 B-2/R2s in large numbers. The Henschel Hs 129 had been designed specifically as a "tank buster". In its nose were two 7.92mm machine guns and two 20mm cannons, but its real power was in its main armament, a single 30mm Mark 101 or 103 cannon housed in a gondola beneath the fuselage. When brought to bear on the thin engine housing at the real of a tank, unarmoured lorries or the timber-built Soviet bunkers, this weight of fire was usually fatal. The Fw 190s operated closely with the Hs 129s, dropping SD1 and SD2 fragmentation bombs to disrupt the Soviet infantry attack lines.

The slow speed of the ground-attack aircraft such as the Hs 129 and the Stuka necessitated close fighter cooperation to allow their crews to concentrate on the job in hand, and this was to be provided by the Messerschmitt Bf 109 G-6 and Focke-Wulf Fw 190 A-5s. The armament of the Fw 190 — four 20mm cannon in the wings and two 7.92mm machine guns in the forward fuselage — coupled with a speed of 605km/h (382mph), made it a fighter to be reckoned with. The weaponry and performance of the Bf 109 was similar. Heavier bombing operations were to be conducted by other tried and trusted aircraft, such as the Heinkel He III and the Junkers Ju 88.

The Luftwaffe supported the northern pincer with Colonel-General Ritter von Greim's 6th Air Fleet, which consisted of the 1st Air Division, the 12th FlaK Division and the 10th FlaK Brigade. The mixed bag of antitank fighter and bomber aircraft numbered 730. Amongst these were three Stuka groups. The guns of the FlaK units were highly effective weapons, particularly the 88mm. However, such was the effectiveness of the 88 against Soviet tanks that many FlaK batteries were assigned to the Wehrmacht to bolster the antitank gun formations which had less effective weapons. The consequence was that the protection available to Axis airfields was severely curtailed.

The Luftwaffe that now geared up for Operation Citadel was not the one that had dominated the Russian skies for almost two years. Commander of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Göring, had promised that no bombs would fall on the Reich. By early 1943 the emptiness of his words was proven daily by the Anglo-American bomber offensive that damaged Germany's industrial output and chiselled away at the people's morale. To counter this, Göring had withdrawn many fighter squadrons from the Eastern Front and diverted aircraft output to the West, with the consequence that the Eastern Front fought with diminished assets. To further compound this difficult situation, the Western air war was given priority in the allocation of fuel, so that the fuel allowance for the Battle of Kursk was 30 percent below its actual requirement.

However, the experience of the aircrews, the efficiency of the ground crews and the superiority of the machines were all factors that the ordinary German soldier took for granted; after all, had not the Wehrmacht enjoyed almost total air superiority over the Red Air force since the first hours of Operation Barbarossa? What the Landser in their trenches were unaware of was that the Red Air Force was now not, as it had been for so long, mere target practice for the Red Baron's proteges, but a real force to be reckoned with, and one to be taken very seriously indeed.

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On 5 July the day dawned bright and warm. On the dusty runways of Belgorod, Kharkov, Poltava and Dnepropetrovsk the Ju 88 and He 111 bombers of VIII Air Corps lined up for take-off as the first waves of the Citadel air offensive, when the wireless monitoring service reported a considerable increase in Soviet air traffic, and soon afterwards the "Freya" radar at Kharkov detected the approach of large air formations from the east. These formations contained 132 Shturmoviks and 285 fighters of the Second and Seventeenth Air Armies, detailed to destroy the German bombers on the ground when their fighter escorts were not yet airborne. But this pre-emptive strike was not to succeed. The Soviet regiments were intercepted by the Bf 109 Gs of Jagdgeschwader (hunting formations) 3 "Udet" and JG 52 scrambled from Kharkov East and Mikoyanovka, which claimed 120 air victories in the opening air battle.

In the northern sector, the Germans reported that Soviet fighter reaction to 1st Airborne Division operations began only in the late afternoon, and the Fw 190 fighters of JG 51 and JG 54 had claimed 115 Soviet aircraft by nightfall. The committal of fighters to the abortive pre-emptive strike in the early morning left the VVS unable to contest Luftwaffe air supremacy on the southern flank of the salient, and in the north, Soviet replies to the Luftwaffe attacks were tardy and ineffectual. The two fighter corps designated to give frontline cover, Yumashev's VI Fighter Corps over the Central Front and Klimov's V Fighter Corps over the Voronezh Front, were unable to cope. Without adequate air cover, the Soviet ground forces lost confidence and the Wehrmacht began to make headway. Novikov had to give his attention first to the failings of his fighters and, as a result of his investigations, Yumashev and Klimov were both replaced, VI Fighter Corps being taken over by Major-General Yerlykin and V Fighter Corps by Major-General Galunov.

Nor were the Soviet attacks on German armour initially successful. Despite new antitank bombs, their RS-82 rockets and more formidable 37mm cannon, the Il-2 Shturmoviks failed to get through and stop the panzers rolling forward. Flying in small groups, the Il-2s and Pe-2s often lacked fighter escort or they were abandoned when the very first sign of trouble appeared.

On Khudyakov's orders, the Shturmoviks began to fly in much larger formations of regimental size to make escort easier, and to enable the Il-2s to break through and suppress ground fire by sheer weight of numbers and the persistence of attack. Flying in pelang formation - staggered line abreast — the Il-2s no longer made hasty passes at low level under favourable conditions, but carried out calculated dive approaches from under 1000m (3280ft) at angles of 30-40 degrees, releasing their bombs and rockets when 200-300m (656-984ft) from their target, and making repeated passes with cannon and machine guns.

At the end of the second day, in the north of the salient, the VVS had overcome its problems and was able to contain the German fighters, if not the bombers. But from 7 July the Sixteenth Air Army got into its stride and began to wear down the Luftwaffe. By 8 July Khudyakov was able to report on the improvement in Shturmovik potency, and the Luftwaffes power to control air space over the battle areas declined. The Luftwaffe was running out of replacements to maintain its squadrons at full strength, and the RAF began to range more freely over the German lines.

Although the Germans could still mount effective ground-support missions, in specific areas if not along the entire combat zone, their superiority was being eroded at an alarming rate. By the end of effective ground-offensive operations in the northern sector, the power of the Luftwaffe was much reduced.

The picture to the south was much the same. Soviet weight of numbers and the increasingly efficient use of machines whittled away at the numerically inferior Germans, and by 11 July the Luftwaffe was only able to achieve success in narrow areas such as supporting the thrust of II SS Panzer Corps towards Prokhorovka. As Rotmistrov described the scene over the battlefield of Prokhorovka from his command post: 

"At the same time, furious aerial combats developed over the battlefield. Soviet as well as German airmen tried to help their ground forces to win the battle. The bombers, ground-support aircraft and fighters seemed to be permanently suspended in the sky over Prokhorovka. One aerial combat followed another. Soon the whole sky was shrouded by the thick smoke of the burning wrecks."

If Prokhorovka was, as Konev described it, "the swansong of the German armour", then Operation Citadel would mark the coming of age of the Red Air Force. For the first time since the outbreak of war, the VVS had met the Luftwaffe on almost equal terms, and although there was a long way to go before they reached the final victory, the Soviet air fleets had clipped the wings of Hitler's Luftwaffe and had gained control of their own skies once more.

Il-2 combat operations during 1943-1944

 

In the summer of 1944 the Soviet Command decided to use clustered projectiles against the enemy armoured vehicles, and the PTAB 2.5-1.5 'cumulative' aircraft bomb, developed under the leadership of I Larionov, was put into production. The small calibre bombs were loaded directly into the bomb bay and were dropped on the enemy vehicles from altitudes up to 328ft (100m). As each Il-2 could carry up to 192 bombs, a 'fire carpet' 229ft (70m) long and 49ft (15m) wide covered the enemy tanks, giving a high probability of destruction. This was important because the low accuracy of the Il-2's bomb sight was one of its shortcomings.

Pilots of the 291 st ShAP were the first to use the PTAB 2.5-1.5 bombs. In one operation on 5th June 1943 six attack aircraft led by Lieutenant Colonel AVitrook destroyed 15 enemy tanks in one attack, and during five days of the enemy advance the 291 st Division pilots destroyed and damaged 422 enemy tanks.

In the Battle for Kursk General V Ryazanov became a master in the use of attack aircraft en masse, developing and improving the tactics of the Il-2 operation in co-ordination with infantry, artillery and armoured troops. Ryazanov was later twice made a Hero of the Soviet Union, and the 1st Attack Aircraft Corps under his command became the first to be awarded a Guard title.

However, the successes of attack aircraft combat operations were accomplished with great losses. The Luftwaffe Command claimed that the Russians lost 6,900 Il-2s in 1943 and 7,300 in the following year. Although these figures exaggerated the losses by a factor of 2 to 2.2, they were substantial nonetheless. In 1943 one loss corresponded to 26 Il-2 sorties, and to even fewer in certain operations. Approximately half of those lost were shot down by enemy fighters, the other half falling to anti-aircraft fire of ground-based guns. Assessing the main reasons for such great losses, the Air Force Commander, A Novikov, considered that poor training of the crews and units was not to blame, but attributed them to flawed tactical procedures in attack aircraft operation. On almost all fronts the pilots adopted a peculiar scheme of approaching the target at 3,300 to 4,900ft (1,000 to 1,500m) altitude without considering its nature, then gliding down and recovering after the attack with a turn, to port. The enemy therefore knew the .attackers' manoeuvres beforehand, and prepared all of his anti-aircraft defences, taking full advantage of relief features, forest, bushes etc, before their appearance over the battlefield.

The German Bf 109 and Focke-Wulf Fw 190 attacked successfully when the Il-2 gunners were inattentive and the formations were broken up. A damaged and lagging Il-2 often became the victim of fighters. However, attack aircraft pilots could sometimes use skilful defensive tactics, and gunners mastered aggressive fire techniques.

The Il-2's survivability was appraised in the 1st ShAP, and Ilyushin's predictions were confirmed. As a rule the lower armour was not pierced, being hit by low calibre projectiles, and the cockpit also turned out to be effectively armoured. One pilot managed to land his Il-2 with only half of the elevator and rudder and with the port tailplane damaged as a result of anti-aircraft fire, and another landed without any covering on the wing centre section and with no flaps. The rear fuselage, outer wing panels and oil radiators suffered most from anti-aircraft fire. Sometimes the rear fuselage was insufficiently strong, and aircraft with metal outer wing panels appeared to have better chances of survival.

Much attention was paid to eliminating these shortcomings. When deliveries of metal to the aircraft factories became regular, they began to build the aircraft with all-metal wings and to reinforce their rear fuselages with additional lengths of angle extrusions. These features were incorporated in Il-2s manufactured in the second half of 1944.

The results were positive. An analysis of attack aircraft operation in the 3rd Air Army showed that irretrievable losses totalled 2.8 % of the number of sorties, and damage was sustained on half of the sorties. The ease with which the Il-2 could be mastered by pilots and technicians promoted its widespread use on all fronts. Pilot A Yefimov, twice Hero of the Soviet Union, remembered: 'It was one of the most easily-mastered aircraft. There were no difficult instrument operations to distract the pilot from aiming at the target. The aircraft forgave the pilot even for flagrant errors. I do not know of a single case when an aircraft went out of control or entered a spin because of a pilot's mistakes'.

The Il-2 was widely used by the Soviet Navy's air arm. An effective method of attack against shipping was to approach at a height of 100ft (30m) at about 250mph (400km/h) and drop the bombs so that they ricocheted off the water and destroyed the target vessel.

Naval People's Commissar N Kuznetsov considered this method, named top-machtovoe bombometanie, or mast-top bombing, to be approximately five times more effective than horizontal bombing. Lieutenant Colonel N Stepanyan was among the best attack aircraft pilots. On 14th December 1944 Stepanyan led 42 Il-2s of the 47th ShAP in an attack on Libava naval base. Together with Pe-2 bombers, the attack aircraft sank seven freighters and damaged six more. Thirteen Il2s were shot down, including the one flown by Stepanyan, who was posthumously proclaimed a Hero of the Soviet Union, his second such award.

During the Second World War, 26 attack aircraft pilots flying Ilyushins were twice awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

In conclusion, it is worth quoting the assessment of the Il-2 by the German infantry commander General von Sauken, Commander of the East Prussia Group in the final stages of the war. He wrote: 'The effectiveness of Russian aviation activity in the Danzig region was enormous, and petrified the troops. Neither our air force nor our powerful artillery could oppose this air power'.

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Summer 1943. The German army prepares to launch its new offensive for the same ground where it had only months ago suffered its worst defeat of the war to date: The Southern Front. In the coming days, 6000 tanks, 4000 planes and two million soldiers would collide in what would become one of the most spectacular and brutal battles in all of World War II - The Battle of Kursk.

The victories achieved by the Soviet Armed Forces during the Battle for the Volga and the later counteroffensive during the winter of 1942 had a considerable impact on the situation in the Soviet-German Front. The German High Command hoped for a decisive victory which would both soften the political consequences of the defeats suffered during the previous year, as well as wiping out a large number of Soviet units, weakening the entire Russian front. Betting heavily on German technological superiority to improve their odds of a victory, the Germans rushed large numbers of the new heavy Tiger and Panther tanks, and self-propelled Ferdinand vehicles into the theater. In addition to huge numbers of armored vehicles, the Germans looked to the use of combined air and ground power as a force multiplier. From all over Fortress Europa, the Germans drew the best squadrons available and poured them into the airfields of Oriol, Belgorod and Jarkov. In all, 17 squadrons, comprised of more than 1800 planes, were assembled. An additional 200 bombers were stationed in the rear guard airfields. The total commitment of the Luftwaffe numbered some 2000 aircraft - about 70 % of its total strength.

The Soviets, aware of the German plans, sought to protect their ground troops with air cover assembled from units from other fronts, even from the reserves of the Supreme High Command General Headquarters. The Soviet Army gathered 3000 aircraft, roughly doubling the enemy in fighter planes. As the battle raged, wave after wave of Stukas attacked the Soviet armored vehicles, while the Russian planes did the same to the German Panzers. The Luftwaffe attacked industrial sites and communication centers, while the Soviet attacks focused on airfields and ammunition deposits. In a radius of 20 to 60 Kilometers, some 2000 planes engaged in aerial combat involving from 100 to 150 machines at a given time. On July 20th 1943, facing the possibility of Wehrmacht units being cutoff or trapped, and fearing a repeat of the scenario that took place at Stalingrad, Hitler called off "Unternehmen Zitadelle" (Operation Citadel) and the German divisions retreated to a safer position, but not before German forces had suffered huge losses of irreplaceable crews and equipment.

LILYA LITVYAK I

Lilya Litvyak flew her Yak-1 into hell over the Volga on September 10, 1942. She and eight others were transferred from the PVO to the 437th Fighter Regiment out of Verkhnaia Akhtuba, south of the city. The reception from their male counterparts wasn’t the best, as the battle hadn’t become desperate—yet. Mechanics didn’t want to service planes flown by women, and one male pilot even refused to fly a Yak that had been preflighted by “one of those girls.” The regiment commander, Maj. M. S. Khostnikov, supposedly shook his head and said, “We’re waiting for real pilots and they sent us a bunch of girls.”

The attitude is understandable. Stalingrad was slowly being encircled on the west side of the river, no real help was in sight, and the odds were terrible. Since the German Sixth Army had arrived on August 23, more than two hundred VVS aircraft had been lost. Among other foes, the VVS was also facing the renowned Ace of Spades pilots (Pik As) from JG 53. The wing was part of the big assault, and Erwin Meier was flying with 2 Staffel when he met Lilya Litvyak over Stalingrad on September 13.

Veterans from Spain, the Battle for France, and the Battle of Britain, the Pik As were hardened fighter pilots. During the Battle of Britain Goering discovered that the wife of the Geschwaderkommodore, Major Hans-Jürgen von Cramon-Taubadel, had distant Jewish ancestry. Goering made the entire wing remove their Ace of Spades emblem and replace it with a red band around the nose of each aircraft. After their commander was removed, the pilots retaliated by immediately painting over the swastikas on the tails. They were typically hard-fighting, irreverent, and unafraid of the Nazi hierarchy, or anything else, for that matter. One month into Barbarossa, the wing had shot down its one thousandth enemy aircraft.

But the Russians were fighting back—hard. As the German 16th Panzers crunched over the rubble on the outskirts of the city, they ran into the 1077th Anti-Aircraft Regiment. Though effective against aircraft, the 37 mm guns had a tough time with the extra armor plates carried on most Panzer IIIIV tanks. After knocking out all the guns, the Germans were shocked to find they’d been fighting teenage girls. The twin thrusts were largely successful, and by mid-November Paulus had advanced to the Volga shore and controlled nine-tenths of Stalingrad.

It was over a year now since Barbarossa had ground to a halt, and once again winter threatened the Germans. Low clouds, fog, and killing temperatures made most flying difficult if not impossible. Luftflotte IV managed about 1,500 daily sorties but had lost at least 40 percent of its operational aircraft, and the strength of the Sixth Army had fallen by half. The VVS decided to form the 9th Guards Fighter Regiment, an elite unit composed solely of veterans and aces. Commanded by Lev Shestakov, the leading Soviet ace from Spain, the 9th was supposed to do battle with famous German units such as JG 52 and JG 53.

Apparently Shestakov wanted Lilya Litvyak and Katya Budanova in his regiment, given their blossoming reputations. “Watch out for the girls,” he told his male pilots. “And don’t offend them. They fly excellently and they have already killed some Fritzes.” By this time prewar prejudices had disappeared and all that mattered was a pilot’s ability to kill the enemy and not his (or her) comrades. This attitude was shared by most Russians, and in an eerie parallel to Hitler’s Nazi ranting, the Russians were told, “If you have not killed at least one German a day you have wasted that day. If you leave a German alive, the German will hang a Russian and rape a Russian woman. Kill the German.”

By mid-November the snow was falling. The Volga had frozen, making transport of men and ammunition somewhat easier, and the Soviets did the unexpected—they counterattacked with Operation Uranus at 7:20 a.m. on November 19, 1942. Spearheaded by the 1st Guards Tank Army, the Soviet Southwest Front slammed into the Romanian forces on the German left following an eighty-minute artillery barrage.

As their northern flank collapsed, the German 48th Panzer Corps tried to stem the Russian armored assault, but with less than a hundred tanks, it just wasn’t possible. The Stalingrad Front launched its southern attack at 8:00 a.m. the next morning. The Romanian 6th Cavalry Corps crumbled, and the 29th Panzer Grenadiers counterattacked. But with “allies” being routed on all sides, the Germans had to fall back to escape annihilation.

At the end of four days the northern pincer rolled through 90 miles to enter Kalach, due west of the city and behind the German lines. The southern arm of the trap closed nearby at Sovetskiy. It was November 23, and 300,000 Germans from the Sixth Army and 4th Panzers were cut off inside Stalingrad.

Hitler utterly refused to permit the Sixth Army to break out to the west. Stalingrad, though an important strategic objective, was a vital psychological one as well. Not only did it bear his archrival’s name, but it had also been the launching point of Stalin’s career. No, the Sixth Army would hold until a relief force could break the cordon around Stalingrad. Until von Manstein’s Army Group Don arrived, they would be supplied by the Luftwaffe—after all, Goering promised it could be done. However, this was the same man who had sworn to conquer the RAF and stated in 1939 that “no enemy bomber can reach the Ruhr. If one reaches the Ruhr, my name is not Goering. You may call me Meyer.”

Goering was in Bavaria on November 22 and, after assuring Hitler that the airlift could be done, left to visit Parisian art galleries. Von Richthofen was astounded. He had less than fifty Ju 52’s on hand—not even a tenth of those required. An airlift would need to provide a bare minimum of 350 tons of supplies per day for the beleaguered Sixth Army to hold. A single Ju 52 transport was supposed to hold 2 tons of freight, but even that wasn’t quite correct.

This was based on the “1,000 kg” labels fixed to standard Luftwaffe containers, which turned out to indicate only the bomb rack used to hold them. The actual load was about two-thirds of that, or 660 kilograms. So each Junker could manage about 2,600 pounds instead of the 2 tons used for planning. This meant that 270 flights delivering 350 tons would have to land each day to keep the army alive. Also, not every day was a flying day, due to the horrible winter weather. Generaloberst Kurt Zeitzler, the army chief of staff and an Eastern Front veteran himself, was aware of this and the flaws in Goering’s math. A daily delivery of some 500 tons would be needed to take up the slack.

Under forward-area combat conditions, operational readiness for transports was 30 to 40 percent at best. Several hundred Ju 52’s would be required to meet the need, but there were just forty-seven on hand. This was during a time when the German air force was heavily committed in North Africa and the yearly Ju 52 production was about five hundred aircraft. Even with available He 111’s and Ju 88’s, it wasn’t enough, and every Luftwaffe officer from von Richthofen down knew the airlift was hopeless. Even when aircraft managed to land, sometimes it didn’t help. One day 20 tons of vodka and bales of summer uniforms were delivered. Another aircraft arrived loaded with pepper and other spices.

On November 27 an angry Zeitzler had the courage to call Goering a liar to his face, and in front of Hitler. Yet despite the odds, they tried and managed about 80 tons per day even with a resurgent VVS prowling the skies. And the VVS was expanding and strengthening. More than 35,000 sorties would be flown during the battle for Stalingrad and, according to Soviet sources, 1,100 German aircraft would be shot down.

The Red Air Force had successfully adapted to the situations they faced, taking from the Luftwaffe some tactics while inventing others themselves. Three-ship groupings were generally a thing of the past; like the British before them, the VVS now flew a four-ship zveno flight, which could be divided into the two-ship para if needed. They also utilized the okhotniki, or “free hunt,” copied from the German jagd frei, or “roving fighters.”

Others were uniquely Russian. The taran, or “ramming attack,” was performed by VVS pilots on many occasions. The first recorded use was by a Russian named Nesterov in 1914 over the Ukraine—he didn’t survive, and neither did his target.

There were different ways to do it. Ideally, you’d get close enough behind the other fighter to chew up its horizontal tail or rudder with your prop. If you were lucky, your plane was still flyable and you might make it back. Clipping the wing with your own was also possible. Some I-16’s were modified with a beefed-up wing structure to make this more possible. Or, as a final option, you could simply dive straight into the other plane. The likelihood of living through that was next to nothing. It’s estimated that more than five hundred taran attacks were made by the VVS during World War II.

Sokoliny udar, the “falcon blow,” looked similar from the victim’s point of view, but it wasn’t a ram. It was a full-throttle, stick-in-the-lap move into the vertical. This very suddenly traded airspeed for altitude, and if the threat was close or didn’t have the airspeed to follow, the idea was to roll back down and end up behind him as he flashed past.

So at this time, in late 1942 and early 1943, the ground situation gave the VVS enough of a breather to begin reconstitution. Though they’d suffered horrible losses, the Red air force didn’t suffer from manpower potential nor from a crucial shortage of equipment. Logistics was easier in many respects given the local nature of the defense. Also, the factories that had moved to the Urals were beginning to produce again, and Lend-Lease deliveries, which would eventually total some 15,000 aircraft, were arriving in Russia.

So while Goering gathered art on the Seine, the last Axis soldiers limped over the Don River bridges into Stalingrad and blew up the bridges behind them. All through December men fought and died. And they starved. First they ate their transport horses. Then birds, dogs, and rats. Lastly they ate each other. Soviet units recaptured all the airfields by the third week in January and the airlift, such as it was, ended.

On February 1, following 199 days of fighting and 2 million casualties on both sides, Paulus surrendered what remained of the Sixth Army. Just over 91,000 men and 22 generals were marched off to oblivion; fewer than 6,000 would return home ten years later. Hitler had promoted Paulus to Generalfeldmarschall on January 30 assuming that he would fight to the death or commit suicide, as no German officer of that rank had ever capitulated. Paulus chose life and said, “I have no intention of shooting myself for that Bavarian corporal.”

Ten days after the Sixth Army surrendered, Lilya was back in action over the frozen earth west of Stalingrad. As Marshal Zhukov tried to push the Germans west, Stukas and fighter bombers continuously attacked his tanks. She shot down a Stuka on February 11, then, later that same day, ran into the newly fielded Focke-Wulf 190 fighter. February also brought Lilya an officer’s commission, to mladshii leitenant (junior lieutenant), and a promotion to flight lead. So Litvyak now had a wingman of her own. With her recognition and acceptance from the male fighter pilots came a very distinctive self-confidence. She painted a white flower on the side of her Yak and through it became known as the “White Rose of Stalingrad.”* By the end of March she’d added a bomber, another Fw 190, and an Me 109G to her tally. In one nasty fight on March 22, she was shot up by two Me 109G-6’s from JG 3. These had 1,400-horsepower DB 605 engines, with even-numbered variants (such as the G-6) unpressurized and upgraded with a new 30 mm cannon. She shot one of them down and was saved by her wingmen from the other. Badly wounded, Lilya barely landed but had to be pulled from the cockpit.

Sent to Moscow to recover, she remained there until May. Promoted now to senior lieutenant, she returned to the 73rd Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment in early May. During an escort mission on May 5 she hammered a Messerschmitt to pieces, and a second one two days later. The time off had not dulled her reflexes or her marksmanship. Nor had it diminished another issue she had to deal with. Fighter pilots falling in love with each other had never been a problem, for obvious reasons, but when one of them happens to be a beautiful young girl, with long blond hair and gray eyes . . .

So it was for Alexei Solomatin. He’d flown with Lilya, and they’d become close, with a bond only combat can give. But he’d also fallen in love with her, and in all likelihood she felt the same. Yet with so much to overcome and so much to prove, she never openly allowed her feelings to show. Perhaps she gave in to the adoring young fighter pilot; perhaps not. She never revealed it, and Solomatin was killed three weeks after her return. She was never really the same again.

Her white-hot rage coincided perfectly with the beginning of the last great German offensive in Russia—Operation Citadel. Designed to eliminate the Kursk salient, straighten the German line, and improve the Wehrmacht’s defensive positions, Citadel had been planned back in April 1943.