Close to the Earth

(See Cover)

The ground under the Red troops punching into central Poland and the Baltic littoral was no longer Russian ground; the air was no longer Russian air. But it was Russian-dominated air. The Red Air Force finally commanded it, almost as decisively as the troops below its airmen dominated the terrain.

At a forward observation post in the south, where the stench of high explosives and of the dead defiled the delicate scent of apple blossoms, leathery, bullet-headed Marshal Ivan Konev last week briefed his commanders. He spoke of the new power of the Red Air Force and of its first function: close, devoted support of troops on the ground. Almost as he spoke, swarms of Stormomks skimmed over the apple trees to blast the German troops, gun positions and tanks.

The tired, thinning Luftwaffe fought back, but feebly. A Moscow communique claimed 128 German planes shot down in one day. What the air attack had done to blast the way for Konev's tanks and infantry was another story.

At Dvinsk alone, nine German supply and troop trains were smashed and burned. Exploding ammunition dumps, touched off by Red bombers, spread fires and ruin. Tottering back on Warsaw, German troops were strafed on the roads by attack planes, medium bombers and fighters: among them were U.S.-built, Russian-manned Airacobras, Bostons and cannon-carrying Mitchells.

Burden and Credit. One man more than any other had a right to exult over this fruition of Red air power. Rescuing and rebuilding the Air Force, after Germany's assault had all but knocked it out, had been no one-man job. But one man shouldered the heaviest part of the burden and in Russia he gets the lion's share of the credit. He is Marshal Alexandr Alexandrovich Novikov, chief of the Red Air Force.

Moscow did not say where Novikov was last week--but he was probably steaming around, as usual, from one forward airfield to another, watching his airmen, shooting the breeze with them, cheering them on. If he had been able to do as he pleased, 42-year-old Marshal Novikov would doubtless have been flying combat missions himself. But his friend Joseph

Stalin does not permit that. Like other top air commanders, Novikov is forbidden to take battle risks.

Peeking Prohibited. For years before the war the Kremlin kept the details of its air establishment under such secrecy that foreign observers, and even reporters inside the U.S.S.R., wondered just what the Russians were flying and how, and what they intended doing in case of war.

Even after the Soviet Union began taking Lend-Lease equipment from the U.S., the Russians continued to be suspicious, closemouthed. With the turn of the tide in the Allied fortunes, the Russian reluctance to disclose information has just perceptibly relaxed. Though they still do not publicize their late warplane types, as the U.S. does, the main outlines of Russian air development have become fairly clear.

Germ of the Blitz. Unlike irregular political theory, unorthodox military thinking in Russia has never been penalized. In the 1930s Soviet air-war theory was characterized by bold ideas. It was a Russian, Amiragov, who was among the first to state that a modern war must start with a coordinated assault by tanks and aircraft. The Germans were at work on this nucleus of the Blitzkrieg idea, but the rest of Europe paid little attention. The Russians were the first to experiment on a large scale with mass dropping of parachute troops, and among the first with gliderborne assault forces. But it was the Germans who first carried these tactics out in battle. Somewhere along the line, the Russian experiments languished.

The Spanish Civil War was a laboratory for the Russians as it was for the Axis. The Russians watched the German Blitzkrieg rehearsal with military as well as political interest; at Guadalajara their own planes effectively chewed up the Italian armor in the world's first great demonstration of attack aviation. But their planes were behind the times. Soviet design and production were not up to Soviet theory. By the beginning of the Finnish war the Russian planes were still not up to snuff and the job had to be done mainly with that faithful old standby --masses of artillery.

But the lessons of Spain and Finland had been learned. Soviet design was sharpened up, and the factories began a change over to new types. In the midst of this process, Hitler struck.

Friendly Winter. The German attack in June 1941 caught the Red Air Force by surprise. Appalling numbers of Red planes were destroyed on the ground. In the air, the Russians were outnumbered, outgunned and outflown. They fought on until winter brought a breathing spell. The Russians had landing gear which could be easily switched to skis, and they knew how to keep their engines and lubricants from freezing. The Germans did little about the winter except to complain. That year Rus sian winter grounded more of the Luftwaffe than Russian air action.

By the time the unfriendly warm weather returned, Lend-Lease planes were beginning to arrive from the U.S. and England. But from northern Norway and Finland, the Luftwaffe was taking terrific toll of the Allied convoys plying to Murmansk. Much Lend-Lease shipping for Russia had to be rerouted the dismally long way around to the Persian Gulf. The Russians hung on. They dismantled the aircraft factories which lay in the path of the Wehrmacht, moved them far to the rear and reassembled them there.

At Stalingrad, the Nazis still had air superiority. But as the tide of the whole war turned at Stalingrad, the tide of the air turned also. The Russians were getting more planes from their factories as well as by Lend-Lease. They were getting shrewder designs, better-trained air fighters. The U.S. and British air forces were beginning to grind down the Luftwaffe in its factories and in the air. As the great counteroffensive rolled westward, the Russians achieved something like air equality.

"To Hell with the Gadgets." For this Joseph Stalin had four men to thank.

Designers Sergei Iliushin and Alexandr Yakovlev, both major generals and Heroes of Socialist Labor; Aleksei I. Shakhurin, the People's Commissar for the Aviation Industry; and Marshal Alexandr Novikov.

Novikov told Iliushin and Yakovlev what kind of planes he had to have; the two designers worked them out on their drawing boards; Shakhurin built them.

Novikov was Chief of Staff of the Red Air Force, in charge of planning, when Hitler struck. The responsibility of saving the Air Force from annihilation fell on him. Novikov said, in effect: "Build up our fighters. Make our present models bet ter, and build them as fast as we can. To hell with the gadgets. To hell with the smooth work on unessential parts. We want airplanes that will fly and shoot. We have the pilots. Those who haven't enough training can finish their training in combat. We'll lose a lot of men, but we've got the men and we've got to do it that way." It was in 1939, at a conference called to discuss ways & means of building up Red air power, that Novikov had first come to the attention of Joseph Stalin. Novikov, who not long before had transferred to the Air Force from the Infantry, was sponsored at the meeting by Marshal Semion Timoshenko, who called him "Shurik." Stalin was impressed by the young man's forthright speech and sensible ideas, and they became friends. In 1942 Shurik supplanted Lieut. General Yakov V. Smushkevich as chief of the Red Air Force; the following year he was named a marshal, the first Red airman to reach that rank. His present title is Chief Marshal of Aviation.

Quick Pay-Off. Russia had some heavy bombers in its hangars, better ones on the drawing boards; early in 1943 there were a few tentative raids on East Prussia and

Ploesti. But Novikov squelched the idea of building a massive long-range bombing fleet. To produce the planes and the necessary equipment, and to train the crews in navigation, radio and bombing, was too much of a job.

Russia was in a hurry; she was in a desperate fix. She needed planes for a quick pay-off--fighters to deal with enemy bombers and fighters, and hard-hitting attack planes to beat up tanks, troops, trucks and every other sort of small target. Novikov committed his Air Force to close support of the ground troops. There was no time for anything else.

Russia's most famed warplane, and its most substantial contribution to air-support tactics is the Iliushin Stormovik or attack plane,/- It is armed with various but always heavy combinations of cannon, machine guns, rockets or bombs. Though not very fast or highly maneuverable, it is heavily armored as a protection from machine-gun fire. At its favorite operational altitude--150 ft. or less--it is almost impossible to hit with large-caliber antiaircraft. If the sky is disputed by enemy fighters, Stormomks have their own fighter escorts. Coordinated with the massive Russian artillery, Stormoviks have played a proud role in the German downfall.

The Fighters. The Yakovlev series of fighters (of which the Yak9 is the latest publicized model) are generally regarded as Russia's best. Because of material shortages and production bottlenecks, both the Yak and the Stormovik are made partly of wood. Despite this primitive feature they are rugged aircraft: the Yak is also light, fast and fast-climbing. It is no aerodynamic beauty like the German FW-190 or the U.S. Mustang, but the Germans treat the Yaks and their slam-banging pilots with great respect.

Another series of good Russian fighters was designed by Semion Lavochkin. In 1942 Iliushin, Yakovlev and Lavochkin were awarded prizes of $30,000 each and hailed as "Creators of Stalinist Aviation."

Russian fighter pilots are tremendously fond of the U.S.-built Bell Airacobra, which they call Cobrushka ("Little Cobra") ; they have more than 4000 of them. The Russians were profoundly uninterested in U.S. criticism of Cobrushka on the grounds that it could not fight at high altitude; like any other tactical air force, the Russians do nearly all their fighting below 15,000 ft'. Nearly all of the top-scoring Red aces fly Airacobras. Colonel Alexandr Pokryshkin, the leading Allied ace who at latest reports had shot down 59 Nazis, got 48 of them with the Bell fighter.

Serious-Minded Men. The vast majority of the flyers are of peasant stock straight from the soil; they fly with confidence and verve. They seem mostly older and bulkier than U.S. pilots, show little youthful exuberance, do not regard themselves as glamor boys. By training and indoctrination, they are serious-minded men with serious jobs to do. They are not reckless in the sense of deliberately courting danger, but they are not surrounded by so many safety regulations-and devices as U.S. airmen.

Their attitude, in effect, is that danger is something to be avoided, but not if you are in a hurry or preoccupied by something else. Some observers say that they fly their planes "like the Cossacks ride their horses." They seem to be able to fly any number of missions without visible fatigue. Few of them have heard of such fancy flyers' ailments as psychoneurosis.

Their morale is high--more so now than ever before. Everywhere they show a warm loyalty and admiration for Alexandr Novikov. The Marshal gets around so much that most of them know him by sight, at least.

Cards on the Table. Americans who have met Novikov describe him as "delightful." With his blunt features and close-clipped hair, he is handsome in a heavy Russian way. A guileless man who is annoyed by guile in others, he likes to lay his cards on the table, so far as the strictures of Soviet policy permit. When he is in Moscow, Novikov's day begins customarily at noon; he works until midnight or later. He spends as much time as he can reading his large technical library on air warfare.

Novikov's portrait hangs prominently in airports from Kharkov to Alma Ata, but his name rarely appears in the Soviet newspapers. Like other Red bigwigs, he considers his private life his own. He likes parties and people, takes his blond wife out whenever he has time, drinks his vodka do dna (at a gulp). His uniforms are impeccably tailored.

Evidence Enough. In addition to his other abilities, Novikov is a diplomat. Some of his best men, whom he could have used in executive capacities at home, he sent to Washington to maintain a polite but steady pressure for an evergrowing supply of Lend-Lease planes to Russia. The U.S. terminus at Great Falls, Mont., from which aircraft are flown to Russia by the Alaska-Siberia route, is now sending off equipment at the rate of many thousand planes a year. Guesses at current Soviet production are usually in the range of 30,000 planes a year. These figures, as contrasted with the dwindling German trickle, are evidence enough that the Red Air Force (with vast help from its Allies in material and in battle over Europe) has won the war in the air. If it had lost it, Russia might also have lost the war.

/- The word Stormovik does not refer to a particular aircraft design but to a class of aircraft--"storming" planes--of which the Iliushin is simply the best and best known .

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