World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF RUSSIA: Pokryshkin Wins

A Red flyer named Pokryshkin roared head on at a slim-bodied Junkers, shot upward, swerved right, then banked sharply, with his guns blazing. The German bomber fluttered down, trailing smoke. At a Red Air Force headquarters, a 35th digit was marked against the name of Major Alexander Pokryshkin. Across the breadth of Russia, men & women grinned and muttered: “Molodets paren”—atta boy. For to them, Alexander Pokryshkin is one of the war’s top air heroes.

Hero Pokryshkin worked his way from the ground: he began as a mechanic at an airfield, shifted to an aircraft factory, took up flight training. On his blouse glisten the Gold Star of a Hero of the Soviet Union, three other Soviet orders, the U.S. Distinguished Service Medal.

Red Progress. Russia’s Pokryshkins did not save her, as the R.A.F. saved Britain in 1940. They could not, for in the vastness of Russia’s plains the infantryman and the artilleryman bore the biggest burden. But Pokryshkin and his comrades helped to win an uphill fight for the control of Russia’s skies, contributed much to this year’s victories.

In 1941, German bombers droned by the hour over the Red positions, and few Red Fighters challenged them. This week, few German bombers ventured out with out twice their number of fighters. The Luftwaffe, once able to bomb Russia’s remote bases, industrial centers, airfields at will, now has difficulty protecting its hard-pressed armies. In the path of the Wehrmacht’s retreat across the Ukraine, Moscow said last week, Red aircraft “darken the skies from dawn to dusk, discharging thousands of tons of explosives which pulverize everything beneath them.”

In winning their battle, the Russians made good use of Lend-Lease Airacobras, sturdy DB-7s (Bostons), all-purpose A20 attack bombers. But the backbone of victory was formed of Russia’s own:

» The YAK9 fighter is to Russia what the P-51 is to the U.S., the Spitfire IX to Britain. Designed by Alexander Yakovlev, this fast, durable fighter flies at 365 m.p.h., has a range of 425 miles, carries a cannon, two heavy machine guns (light armament by British or U.S. standards, but enough to do yeoman work for the Russians).

» The LA5 is Russia’s newest, fastest, most maneuverable single-engined fighter. Its speed is 380 m.p.h. (slower than comparable U.S. types), its range 500 miles, its armament two cannon and two machine guns. Reportedly its engine is based on Curtiss-Wright designs.

»IL-2 and IL4 are related types which the Russians call Stormoviks and the Germans “Black Death.” Slow, cumbersome, low-ceilinged, the Stormovik is heavily armored. Its primary job is tank and fort-busting, which it accomplishes with eight rocket bombs under each wing, two heavy cannon, four machine guns.

Where Death Is Made. The Russians are justly secretive about their aircraft plants. Since the war began, probably no more than a dozen non-Russians, including WPB’s Donald Nelson (see p. 20) have been allowed inside. But Soviet newspapers received in the U.S. last week cautiously described a Stormovik factory.

One of the “refugee plants” from western Russia, the factory lies somewhere in a “deserted prairie valley”—presumably on the eastern fringe of European Russia. In some respects, the account resembled descriptions of new plants in U.S. boom towns. As yet the factory is unkempt and ragged. A railroad has been laid, but there are no busses or streetcars. In the spring and fall “it is no pleasant matter for the Workers to make their way home through the welling mud.” But the vast factory hums with work, and thousands pass through its gates each shift. The buildings are camouflaged, for when they were built the foe was still within raiding radius.

The factory’s pride is a huge 500-ton hydraulic press, bought in the U.S. before the war, removed from its first site and reassembled in midwinter in a roofless, windowless shed.

Through wide gates, completed Stormoviks roll out on an airfield for rigid tests by factory pilots and Army inspectors. If satisfactory, the planes are then handed over to Air Force pilots, who fly them straight to the front.