ISBN 0-935553-48-7
306 pages

Foreword; Glossary and Guide to Abbreviations; Prologue; photos; maps; tables; orders of battle; Notes; Sources; Index

Appendices: The Structure of the Luftwaffe; The Structure of the Soviet Air Forces; Luftwaffe Order of Battle: June 22, 1941; VVS Order of Battle: June 22, 1941; Rank Equivalency Table; The Highest Military Awards

   The immensity and intensity of air operations there render it impossible for anyone to do for the Russian Front what Christopher Shores and his colleagues have done for the Desert, Tunisia, Malta, and other theaters with books like Fighters over the Desert and Fighters over Tunisia. Thus, we're not likely to see day-by-day accounts of every sortie flown, every victory claimed, and every aircraft downed for the Soviets and Germans on the Russian Front from 1941 to 1945.
   Nor do authors Bergstrom and Mikhailov aspire to quite that level of detail. It appears, however, that the Black Cross, Red Star series will come closer to that holy grail than anything else currently available.
   Bergstrom and Mikhailov manage to bring together, almost for the first time, massive amounts of memoirs and archival material from both sides, Luftwaffe and VVS, and integrate the information into a serious attempt to compare and contrast the sources. The result avoids most of the one-sidedness inherent in otherwise valuable books such as Hardesty's Red Phoenix and Muller's The German Air War in Russia while simultaneously offering a mass of useful detail (taken from German- and Russian-language volumes) on individual pilots and sorties, somewhat along the line of the aforementioned opuses by Shores.
   The book begins with a brief assessment of the state of the opposing air forces, then moves quickly into an unceasing operational account punctuated by occasional views of the front, and the war, as a whole. The authors are fastidious about unit identifications, plane types, formation commanders, victories claimed, losses conceded, and so on. Even the photographs—and there are many, but carefully chosen to complement rather than overwhelm the text—are generously and informatively captioned. Similarly, brief excerpts from pilots' memoirs illuminate the account rather than overshadowing it.
   While the authors occasionally get in a bit over their heads when mentioning tangential events like the activities of the Einsatzgruppen and Stalin's mass executions of political prisoners, for the most part they focus on the air forces and their operations, and in this realm Bergstrom and Mikhailov usually do quite well, offering both information and analysis. For example, while Hardesty explains that the Il-2 Shturmovik "displayed considerable promise as a ground attack weapon in the summer of 1941..." and "...made effective, low-level attacks on German infantry, mechanized columns, and airfields," Black Cross, Red Star offers a closer look.

   On the evening of June 27 the new, heavily armored Soviet Shturmovik aircraft Il-2 made its combat debut against this sector, but with poor results. When the war broke out, there had been only 249 planes of this model at hand, all manufactured at Aircraft Production Plant No. 18 Znamia Trudia at Voronezh. The pilots of 4 ShAP had been shifted from obsolete R-Z planes to Il-2s only in June 1941. By the time the war broke out they had been trained only to take off and land this new aircraft. Knowing nothing about required tactics or combat use, and not even having fired the 20mm guns or RS rockets, they were brought into action against enemy vehicle columns in the Bobruysk area. The first mission was carried out by three Il-2s. One of them returned to base with severe damage from antiaircraft fire. Half an hour later, a damaged SB crashed into this Ilyushin, destroying it completely. The next day, the Bf 109s of JG 51 experienced the armored shell of the Il-2 for the first time. Against three of 4 ShAP's Il-2s that were raiding the pontoon bridges over Berezina River at Bobruysk, the fighter pilots were stunned to see their bullets and cannon shells bounce off the agile single-engine planes. The only result was one damaged Il-2, whose pilot managed to bring it home to a safe landing. During the first three days of combat, 4 ShAP registered only two Il-2s shot down by enemy fighters, but due to a lack of experience among its pilots, a further nineteen were lost to other causes, including at least eight to AAA. No less than twenty of the regiment's pilots were killed or listed as missing during these three days.

   Likewise, Bergstrom and Mikhailov reopen the old story of Kapitan Nikolay Gastello's heroic suicide air-to-ground ramming of a column of German vehicles (see, for example, the accounts of Gastello's deed in Wagner's The Soviet Air Force in World War II and Kozhevnikov's The Command and Staff of the Soviet Army Air Force in the Great Patriotic War) and reveal that a 1951 investigation of the site proved the plane in question was actually flown by Kapitan Aleksandr Maslov. However, given that Gastello had already been mythologized by the government for someone else's sacrifice, the facts were officially concealed.
   Beyond this kind of personal detail, the authors provide fairly comprehensive air OBs for both sides at the outbreak of war, plus an excellent map of the locations of the opposing air units—the Soviets in particular—on 22 June.
   This is great stuff, and vastly more, for example, than Plocher gives in The German Air Force versus Russia in 1941, but it should also be said that it's not perfect. The level of writing tends to be a bit amateurish and even sometimes ingenuous. (It's not clear if the book was originally written in English, or if it was translated into English from another language, or if English is the first language of either of the authors.) Also, there are inevitably annoying gaps where precise information seems not to be available about unit strengths, compositions, and deployments. Even so, there is a great deal here which will be of extreme interest to every student of air warfare or Operation Barbarossa.
   What's more, this is touted as the first of four volumes in the Black Cross, Red Star series, so eventually Bergstrom and Mikhailov should be able to offer complete coverage of the Luftwaffe versus the VVS from 1941 through 1945. Chris Shores, watch out!
   Recommended.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Pacifica Military History.
   Thanks to Pacifica for providing this review copy.