I spent some time on this site .. amazed at myself for not even realising that there were so many Russian aces !! Hero of the Soviet Union - OnAirpower.org
Including women ....... ! Lydia Litvyak - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Soviet Military Awards Page..The Memorial to Soviet Ace Lydia Litvyak 1/4 And heres some more ....... Female Soviet Pilots of WW2
Annie I posted a thread on Kozhedub and Pokryshkin a few months ago. They were of course the two highest-scoring aces of any Allied nation. http://ww2chat.com/forums/war-air/1860-soviet-aces-kozhedub-pokryshkin.html However I found it difficult to find much info on the others, so I think I'm about to be spending a lot of time on this site that you have found!
Whims of Fate [The Voice of Russia] WW II ACE STORIES Google Translate is good for the Russian sites AR Google Translate Also I wonder what it was that got Stalin going on his purge of the men who were in the Spanish War ... quite a few on that list were executed ... or is that a "touchy" subject ?
I was also going to ask .... I saw a question asking about the difference in numbers of the Allied aces and the German aces ..... the Germans had nearly 6 times as many ... was that just propaganda do you think ??
Annie I made a bit of a study of this earlier in the year, after reading the biograpy of Erich Hartman "The Blond Knight of Germany". The thread below includes a paragraph on what appear to be the reasons for the high scores of the leading Germans. http://ww2chat.com/forums/war-air/1824-erich-hartmann-ace-aces.html
I think the point that AR and Kyt make in the Hartmann thread is very valid - the time in the frontlines was much longer than that of their opposition. Lex McAulay, in his Against All Odds - RAAF Pilots in Malta 1942 says that if some pilots' scores were extrapolated over longer periods of time than say the 3-6 months they spent on the island (i.e. they faced the same frenetic action for a much longer period of time and achieved a similar rate of success) then their tallies could have been around the 90 mark which is certainly nothing to be sneezed at! An interesting comment in relation to Clive Caldwell with reference from Bobby Gibbes and Marseille: On 21 February 1942, one of the Luftwaffe's most successful desert fighter pilots Hans-Arnold Stahlschmidt was shot down in flames by Clive Caldwell. A quote from Hans-Arnold Stahlschmidt (59 Victories). "One of the leading Kittyhawks (Caldwell) had suddenly pulled up into a vertical position, hung briefly on it's propeller and fired just one burst". A quote from Hans-Joachim Marseille (158 Victories) who witnessed Caldwell's adventurous attack. "It was a fabulous shot". A quote from Bobby Gibbes (10 Victories) "I saw what you were trying to do but never thought you could do it".
Which does show that even a relatively inferior aircraft such as the Kittyhawk could be effective in the right hands. And the top aces such as Marseille and Stahlschmitt were outstanding even among their own side.
