Air Battles Over the Baltic: The Air War on 22 June 1941 - The Battle for Stalin's Baltic Region

摘要

The opening day of Operation Barbarossa saw the German Luftwaffe all but eliminating the Red Air Force (Voyenno-Vozdushnye Sily [VVS]) from the skies over the Soviet Union. This resounding defeat was shocking. The VVS, after all, had recently experienced combat over Finland and against the Japanese in the East. Despite the importance of air power to the German war effort, relatively limited scholarship has been available on how and why the VVS failed so miserably to defend Soviet airspace. Air Battles Over the Baltic: The Air War on 22 June 1941 - The Battle for Stalin's Baltic Region, by Mikhail Timin, a Russian researcher, sheds light onto the state of the composition, capabilities, and conditions of the VVS in the months preceding the invasion and during the first day of combat. His dense, technically sophisticated text is not for casual readers but aimed at a specialized audience seeking to better understand the VVS, Soviet preparations and reactions, and the results in one theater of the war.