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GAU-8 · 05-12-2008, 10:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Albany Rifles

Those successes inthe East was because it was used in the air defense role agaionst German bombers...which were all battles fought at lower than 15,000 feet.

Western Europe's air battles were all high altitude affairs...where it was a lead sled.

Direct Hit AR.

From P-39 In Soviet Use by James Geghardt:

Why was the P-39, which achieved so little air combat success in other theaters, so effective on the Eastern Front?

The answer to this question lies in the nature of the air war itself on that front. Neither the Germans nor the Soviets engaged in high-altitude, long-range, strategic bombing. The bulk of Soviet war industry had been moved east of the Ural mountains, beyond the range of the Luftwaffe. German medium level and dive bombers went out every day, escorted by Bf-109s and FW-190s, to find and attack Soviet Army ground units. These bombers, and by necessity their escorting fighters, flew at altitudes well within the high performance envelope of the P-39-under 15,000 feet. The P-39, with its nose armament alone, had devastating air-to-air firepower. A hit on a German bomber with a single 37mm round was frequently sufficient to disable or destroy it. The Red Air Force compensated for the P-39's short range by locating their tactical airfields extremely close to the front line-often within artillery range. And during surge periods, when German air activity was intense, Soviet P-39 pilots were known to fly five and even six or more sorties in a single day.

How do we know all this? Many Soviet P-39 combat pilots wrote memoirs in the 1970s and 1980s in which they described their wartime experiences, hundreds of pages of descriptions of life in fighter units and of air combat. Other publications released since the collapse of the Soviet Union offer new information on what units were equipped with the P-39 and when, lists of pilots and their total sorties, aerial engagements, and scores. When fully exploited, these sources will reveal an enlarged and much improved picture of the P-39 Airacobra. It will be shown to be an outstanding combat aircraft, as worthy of respect as the P-38 Lightning, P-47 Thunderbolt, and P-51 Mustang.

--James Gebhardt, a noted expert on Soviet World War Two aviation, has studied hundreds of pages of original Soviet dvocuments and translated Attack of the Airacobras.

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