Later models of the Il-2 flew with rear-facing gunners, who, unprotected, suffered four times the injuries and deaths that pilots did. The rear fuselage, on the other hand, was made of wood. The Sturmoviks were known to the Soviets as “flying tanks,” partly because of the armor-as much as 2,000 pounds of it-encasing its forward fuselage. In the Soviet corner, Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmovik dive bombers were aided by sturdy Petlyakov Pe-2s, less numerous but more maneuverable than the heavily armored Ilyushins. On the first day of combat at Kursk, he made it 150. One German fighter squadron the Soviets faced included 11 pilots who had scored aerial victories one of them, Joachim Kirschner, was credited with 148. Although in January 1943 the Soviets had instituted a new tactical training program, in which pilots practiced combat maneuvers and methods of attacking small, mobile targets, the German pilots had had more effective practice: years of aerial combat. The real disparity between the two sides lay in the experience of the pilots. The German fighters were slightly more advanced, but the Soviet fighters had the advantage in numbers. These were almost evenly matched against Soviet Yaks and Lavochkins. The twin-engine Henschel Hs 129 also helped provide close air support-but not very much its two weak engines required constant maintenance.Īt Kursk, the job of protecting the German bombers fell mainly to Messerschmitt Bf 109 G and Focke Wulf Fw 190 fighters. The Stukas were joined by armadas of Junkers Ju 88 and Heinkel He 111 medium bombers, all acting as long-range artillery. Thereafter, he flew with a prosthetic limb. Even Rudel was shot down 32 times (though all by ground fire) and wounded on many occasions, once so severely that part of his right leg had to be amputated. One of the most capable Soviet fighters, the Lavochkin La-5 defended Soviet dive bombers against Fw 190s and Bf 109s and was able to give almost as good as it got.įor all its destructive power, however, the Stuka had little defensive armament and couldn’t survive without protection. “It’s the only one that you can dive truly vertically.” At Kursk, the Germans had 400 of them. Douglas Dauntless and Japanese Aichi Val. The Stuka was “in a class of its own,” he writes, rating it ahead of the U.S. The commanding officer of a group evaluating captured aircraft, Brown had flown dozens of Axis and Allied types, and in his 1988 book Duels in the Sky, he ranks them. British test pilot Eric “Winkle” Brown picked the Stuka as the best dive bomber of the war. He logged more than 2,500 combat missions during the war and is credited with the destruction of more than 500 tanks and 700 trucks.Įven in the hands of merely competent pilots, the Stuka, sometimes loaded with two 110-pound bombs beneath the wings, instead of the anti-tank cannon, and a single 550-pound bomb beneath the fuselage, was extremely effective against armor. Although a leftover from the Spanish Civil War-and with fixed landing gear, slower than most other aircraft in the sky-the Stuka was a dangerous weapon, especially in the hands of ground-attack experts like Hans-Ulrich Rudel. Key to the German effort was the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka, a gull-wing, two-place dive bomber that, at its most effective, punched through defenses with 37mm cannon mounted on pylons beneath its wings. Both German and Soviet attack aircraft flew combat missions at the request of frontline units and were controlled by ground liaison officers attached to armored forces. He called on one of his commanders, Konstantin Rokossovsky, for an account of the day’s action, but before Rokossovsky concluded his report, Stalin interrupted: “Do we have control of the air, or not?” Rokossovsky could only promise that tomorrow they would.Īt Kursk, both sides believed that ground forces alone could not win the day, and for the first time, each relied on masses of aircraft specially designed or equipped to destroy tanks. But at the end of the first day of combat-July 5-Soviet premier Josef Stalin was focused on another contest that he knew would affect the outcome of the battle for Kursk. So stupendous was the clash of armies around the Soviet city of Kursk in July 1943 that until recently historians focused almost exclusively on the actions of the famous Panzer groups and Red Guard units-German and Soviet tanks, artillery, and infantry-that fought the exhausting, weeks-long battle.
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