However, the sacrifice of the 17th Air Force was not worthless, and due to the two consecutive days of large-scale fighter fighting, the Fourth Air Force stopped bombing Tambov for safety reasons, and using this extremely valuable time, the Bryansk Front not only retracted to Tambov, but also desperately built a number of barricades. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 info Of course, the results of the losses in the air battle could not be concealed and were soon reported to Moscow.

Astalin was so alarmed by the loss that he was ready to personally inquire about the Air Force, just as he had asked about the production of the Il-2 fighter planes every day, and he had General Alexander Aleksandrovich Novikov, Deputy People's Commissar of Defense in charge of the Air Force and who had just been appointed commander-in-chief of the Air Force last month, ask in a sloppy manner:

"Comrade Novikov, do you know that the losses at the front are so huge?"

"I am fully aware that in fact I am against them doing such a brutal act, but as you know, the decision to deploy the air force group and issue combat orders is not in my hands, and the air force command only plays a coordinating role." The other party said calmly, but the dissatisfaction hidden under the calm made Stalin frown.

"Do you still think that we should learn from the Germans and engage in an independent formation and command of the Air Force?"

Novikov was also a little hesitant to say ......this, not knowing what to say, and he agreed with the latter half of the sentence, but once he was labeled "learning from the Germans" in front of him, this could not be said, although he was not rich in political struggle, but at least he still had the ability to discriminate, so he had to explain lightly, "It is natural for the Air Force to cooperate with the commanders of the front armies to participate in operations, and it is completely fine to accept the command of the base camp and the General Staff. It is still more impossible to apply the army's combat methods to the air force, and Comrade Leitel has made the mistake of being too hasty in his expectations for this air battle. ”

"Then tell me, what mistakes of principle were made in the air battle of Tambov?"

"A large formation of aircraft should not be dispatched to take the initiative in an air battle with the German army, and the fighter unit should cover the Il-2 attack aircraft to launch a surprise attack on the ground in a multi-team, small formation, and large-scale manner, and force the enemy to be exhausted by air guerrilla warfare, the target is not the enemy's fighters or bombers, and our main offensive target should be the enemy's armored forces."

"Then why was the target of the German offensive not our armored forces?"

Novikov was not a good question to answer, and he could not tell Stalin plainly that the Germans did not need to bother to attack the armored forces of the Red Army, and that they were enough to clear the Red Army with their armored forces alone.

Stalin asked for a long time without asking what he needed, and then he felt that Novikov had a certain point, waved his hand to signal the other party to stop arguing on this topic, and asked him how he could change the situation in which the air force was strong and we were weak.

Even Novikov didn't have a trick at this. At the beginning of the war, the I-16 fighters commonly used by the Red Army were backward in performance and were defeated by the Germans, and the pilots were killed or captured in batches; After two years of the war, the front-line Red Army finally possessed the La-5 and Yak-9, which were fairly good, but the quality of the pilots had greatly declined, and many people were far from the passing level of the graduates of the aviation school by German standards -- at most, they could fly the planes and fire at the target, and even the landing process was trembling and uneasy.

Pilots of this quality currently accounted for the majority of the pilots of the Red Army. Due to declining industrial capacity and resource constraints, these new aircraft used a lot of shoddy parts and wood substitutes to ensure production, and the overall downtime was no more than 50 hours, but the poor pilots could not even fly these 50 hours - most pilots had no more than 12 hours of flight life, and the combat effectiveness of the 17th Air Group was strictly above average.

The ratio of aircraft losses on both sides of the Eastern Front has been maintained between 1:7 and 1:8, and the monthly output of German aircraft was less than half of that of the Soviet Union, and at the same time, it was necessary to distract North Africa and Western Europe from the war to occupy the main advantage, and when Germany increased its production to 3,000 aircraft per month (almost equivalent to the monthly output of the Soviet Union) and increased the proportion of fighter production, the Il-2 fighter plane, which was originally alive on the Eastern Front, was severely damaged and could not be recovered. But the BF-219 was able to shoot down the Il-2 with ease. If it weren't for the fact that the average number of pilots of the 17th Army of the Air Force was okay, and most of the equipment was cutting-edge fighters, the exchange ratio was far from being 150:800.

But when Stalin conveyed Novikov's opinion to the General Staff, it was met with serious protests.

"Comrade General Secretary, it is not that I shirk my responsibility, still less that the General Staff Headquarters commands indiscriminately, and that the policy of concentrating on the use of the forces of this air force group to fight for air supremacy is something that we have unanimously discussed and approved; in the final analysis, it is still because the combat effectiveness of the Air Force is not good at present, and the quality of the pilots is also poor, so we have suffered relatively large losses, but can we stop fighting because the losses are too great?" Zhukov retorted, "In any case, the German bombers stopped for at least two days, allowing the Bryansk Front to successfully withdraw to Tambov and have the opportunity to build a defensive line, if, according to Comrade Novikov's opinion, we go to fight the enemy's tanks and ignore the enemy's aircraft, the enemy bombers will still be able to blow us up to heavy losses, and if Tambov is lost, who will I keep this air force group for?" ”

"The Germans probably have about 2,500 tanks, and if we go to fight tanks according to Comrade Novikov's opinion, how many tanks can we knock out? 300？ 500？ I've never heard of a major battle that can destroy 300 tanks with just a strike machine, and even if you destroy 500 this time? The enemy still has 2,000 vehicles. "In the final analysis, some comrades in the Air Force are greedy for life and death, and do not dare to meet the enemy's bayonets, but only want to fight tanks -- because they know that even in the worst case, enemy tanks will not pose a threat to our aircraft." ”

Kuznetsov then made up for it: "Comrade General Secretary, I have always been in charge of the navy and do not know much about the air force, but it is obviously a fact that the air forces of Britain, the United States, and Germany are stronger than ours. ”

Stalin's face was cloudy when he heard this, and in the end he did not say anything, but signaled the three to retreat.

Novikov didn't know how much trouble he had caused himself at the beginning of the moment--he thought that Leyter's dispatch to fight in large formations was a momentary hot-headedness, but he did not expect that it was the base camp that nodded his head, Zhukov, Vasilevsky, and Kuznetsov all agreed with this opinion, and he scolded all three of them with a "blind command", and of course the others had to fight back.

If the matter only ends here, it is still public to say that the public is justified and the mother is reasonable, but Novikov's luck is obviously back home. That night, Stalin's son Vasily, who was a major in the Air Force, suddenly returned, on the grounds that he was reporting the latest work to the base camp on behalf of the army group, and in fact the commander of the army group had let Vasily go to see his father and at the same time wanted to ask for more supplies and equipment for the army group -- who would dare not buy Stalin's son.

When Stalin asked his son's opinion on this matter, Vasily rolled his eyes and replied lightly and skillfully: "Airplanes, especially fighter planes, must have been built to deal with enemy aircraft, but Commander Novikov also has a certain truth, many of our pilots are not skilled and cannot fight planes, and it may be more suitable to fight tanks, but it is a waste to use old pilots to fight tanks." ”

The front is quite decent and not offended, but the following words are intriguing: "Air combat experience can only be accumulated in face-to-face combat, and the more brave the pilot, the easier it is to survive and achieve results. If I only dare to hide in the rear and fight tanks, when will I become an ace pilot? ”

Vasily's report on the results of shooting down five planes is, of course, true -- no one dares to lie about this kind of thing, the problem is that when he went to the sky to carry out his mission, he was escorted by a bunch of excellent pilots next to him, and then he gave the most easily shot down target to the "crown prince" to fight, but Stalin himself was in the center and did not know about it, and thought that his son was making rapid progress.

As soon as these few words were said, Novikov was suddenly associated with "compromise, vacillation, and fear of difficulties" in Comrade Stalin's mind, and although he looked the same on his face, it was difficult to make up for the damage once he was broken.

Moscow was also ready to transfer the 2nd Air Force Army as well, but Bagramian reported that the assault force was facing a very serious air threat and hoped to transfer the air after 1 June. But he never mentioned Bagramyan's request, and only told Leitel that because of the excessive losses in the last air battle, it was caused by Novikov's strong opposition, and Leitel was so angry that he scolded Novikov in the headquarters for an afternoon.

Seeing that the Russians were not deceived, Moder could only let the troops enclose the gap first, but the commanders of the two Panzer armies responsible for the encirclement had a disagreement on whether to attack Tambov immediately according to the original plan. General Rudolf-Schmidt believed that the Red Army should take advantage of the unstable foothold to launch a fierce attack and take the city as soon as possible, while Reinhardt believed that Tambov, although the defense system was not tight, had more than 200,000 men after all. It is impossible to defeat it within a week, not only will it waste the time of the southward attack, but it will also lose the valuable tank strength of the Panzer Army. (To be continued.) )