Air Defence in Northern Europe

WORLD WAR II

The Soviet Union

The Red Air Force concentrated about 3000 aircraft against Finland when it began the Winter War on 30th November 1939. The main thrust was directed at the Karelian Isthmus, with over 1000 planes of the 7th Army Air Force, and also north of Lake Ladoga, on the Isthmus of Olonets, where the 8th Army Air Force was operating with about 500 aircraft. There were also weaker formations operating further north, where the 9th and 14th Army Air Forces each had a couple of hundred planes. The Baltic Navy had about 470 aircraft on the eastern and southern coasts of the Gulf of Finland. In addition, the offensive was supported by 300 planes of the long-range bomber command’ and 300 from Kravtshenko’s Detachment. ⁹

The main aircraft types used by the Soviet forces were Polikarpov I-15 Bis, I-153 Chaika, and I-16 Rata fighters, Tupolev SB-2 and Iljushin DB-3 bombers, Polikarpov R-5 and U-2 reconnaissance planes and a Beriev MBR-2 maritime reconnaissance plane.

The Soviets started their air operations with bombing raids on sixteen cities or towns. These came as a surprise to the civilian population, and almost 100 people were killed and over 200 wounded in Helsinki alone. Otherwise the air raids failed to achieve any military effect.⁹

Weather conditions in early December were mainly poor, and this considerably restricted the air operations. Whenever the weather permitted, the bombing campaign was continued. Since the Finns had to concentrate their small fighter force and antiaircraft artillery units on the most critical areas of defence, the numerous Soviet bomber formations were often able to fly fairly freely over the hinterland of Finland. Thus they tended to fly without any fighter cover in the initial phase of the war. They occasionally suffered rather heavy losses when they did meet defending fighters, however, and often dropped their bomb loads prematurely at random and turned back attacked.²¹ The Soviet Command then changed its tactics and brought in large fighter formations as cover for them.

A largish part of the force was withdrawn from the bombing campaign in the February to provide direct support for the ground force attack on the Karelian Isthmus, but the air raids still continued, and Vyborg experienced exceptionally heavy bombing, for example.^l9 At the beginning of March, just before the peace treaty was signed on 13th March, the Soviet fighters carried out a mission to intercept the Finnish fighters which were concentrating on ground attack sorties outside Vyborg.

The air operations undertaken in the Winter War were considered a failure in the Soviet Union. Despite the overwhelming, thirty-fold superiority in numbers, the bombing campaign, with about 44,000 sorties, failed to neutralize the Finnish war effort or to disrupt the country’s economy. The morale of the Finnish people actually improved. It is thus understandable that the concept of strategic bombing won few advocates in the Soviet military councils of that period.^l4 Also, the Soviet fighter tactics proved to be mistaken. A tight triple formation was developed to increase firepower, on the assumption that the wingmen would follow the leader closely and shoot together with him each time. In practice, such tactics possessed almost all the drawbacks of fighter aviation. The tight formation was easier for the enemy to see from a distance, the formation lookout doctrine was poor because the wingmen had to watch the movements of the leader carefully all the time, and only the leader had any practical chances of hitting a target in that kind of shooting arrangement.

The main reason for the failure was obviously the complicated command system, which effectively ruined any attempts at concentrated use of the various forces. The supporting factor was the particularly subordinate status of the Air Force to the Red Army which gave no freedom to adjust the training and equipment to the specific demands of air combat. It is significant that although the Soviets had air superiority by virtue of sheer numbers, they were unable to weaken the Finnish fighter force or to prevent the FAF bomber and reconnaissance operations. The FAF fighter force’s operational capacity was better at the end of the war than it had been at the beginning. It had been totally engaged all the time and had always been able to carry out its missions.

When Germany opened her eastern attack on the Soviet Union on 22nd June 1941 this came as a surprise to the Soviet leadership. A variety of revealing intelligence information had been delivered to Stalin, but he had obviously planned to let Germany and the western powers tire themselves out in their war efforts before he made any move himself, and now it was hard for him to believe that Hitler had already made his eastern assault.

The German "blixt" on the central front demanded almost all of the Soviet attention, but the Air Force still attacked various cities and air bases in Finland on 25th June 1941. Their unescorted bomber formations suffered very heavy losses, however, and the raids were not repeated. After these attacks Finland declared war, announcing military cooperation with Germany, whose troops already were operating in Lapland and in the Gulf of Finland.

The Soviets had about five-fold superiority in numbers in the air on the northern front and about two-fold superiority on the ground, but they were on the defence and had to retreat to the waterline in Eastern Karelia, where the Finns voluntarily stopped their advance and secured their trench positions at the end of 1941.

The FAF enjoyed air superiority over the battle area at this stage, and the Soviet Air Force, caught by a surprise attack in the middle of its renewal and reorganization program after the experiences of the Winter War, was unable to provide any effective Opposition to its air operations in support of the advance of the ground forces. During the trench warfare period at the beginning of 1942 the Soviets gradually improved their air assets and introduced their first new aircraft types, e.g. the MiG-1 and MiG-3 fighters. Western lend-lease support in the form of British Hurricane and Spitfire fighters and American Tomahawks and Airacobras began to arrive in more and more substantial quantities.²⁴

When the German advance was stalled and the retreat westwards began, Soviet pressure on the northern front also started to grow. The main area of operation was the surroundings of Leningrad and the Gulf of Finland, while the main target inside Finland in 1943 was the city of Kotka, an important harbour for naval operations in the Gulf of Finland. The new dive bomber, the Petlyakov Pe-2, and the LaGG-3 and La-5 fighters, and later the Yak-9, together with the lend-lease aircraft, formed the backbone of the air fleet, which operated from bases around Leningrad, the island bases of Lavansaari, Seiskari and Kronstadt, and the Borki air base in the Oranienbaum encirclement.

The Pe-2 dive bomber formations, escorted by fighters, made regular attacks on Kotka, and in addition to strengthening their anti-aircraft artillery system, the Finns had to establish a new fighter air base in Kymi and deploy their new 34th Fighter Squadron, equipped with Messerschmitt 109 G 2 fighters, there to defend Kotka. There were frequent fierce air battles over the Gulf of Finland as the Soviet formations carried out their raids and the FAF fighters attacked them from the Kymi and Suulajärvi air bases. The Soviet Air Force could easily replace the planes lost in these air battles, but the losses of pilots began to become a concern to them.²² By the beginning of 1944 the first contacts were being made about a separate peace agreement between the Soviets and the Finns. The Soviet terms were considered unacceptable in Finland, however, and so, the Soviets tried to make them see reason by sending formations from the Long Range Bomber Command (Aviatsiya Dalnego Destviya - ADD) to the air bases of Levashovo, Kasimovo and Gorskaya near Leningrad, in close proximity to the front line. These and other formations in the rear, altogether about 500 bombers, started a strategic bombing campaign and carried out three major night air raids on Helsinki in February 1944. The well coordinated barrage fire of the Helsinki anti-aircraft defence was able to repulse and deceive the main thrust of the raids, however, and the damage remained minor relative to the volume of the attacks. Out of a total of about 20,000 bombs dropped during the raids, only about 800 hit the city. Casualties amounted to 146 people killed and 356 wounded.²³

At the beginning of March 1944 three Finnish bomber squadrons were on the alert, while air surveillance and radio intelligence were watching the movements of the ADD formations. When these were returning from Tallinn after an air raid on 9th March, Finnish bomber squadrons joined them over the Gulf of Finland under cover of night and followed them to their bases. When the landing lights were on and the Soviet bombers were in the middle of their landing sequence, the Finnish bombers started their run and dropped their bomb loads on the bases. After this the ADD formations were transferred to rear bases and the Helsinki raids were not repeated.²⁴

A build-up of troops to take Finland was initiated in spring 1944, before the race to Berlin began, and the decisive offensive was planned for 9th June 1944. The troops due to participate in this operation had been in training in the area south-west of Leningrad. It was calculated that a ten-fold superiority in numbers was needed for the campaign. The air component included the 13th Army Air Force, the II Fighter Corps and the Baltic Navy Air Force. The 13th Army Air Force was reinforced by two bomber divisions (where one division contained three regiments, each having 32 bombers) and one ground attack division from the Long-Range Bomber Command. The total number of combat planes was about 1500.

The mission of the 13th Army Air Force was:²⁴

to destroy Finnish defence positions in the 21st Army’s attack sector

to prevent enemy artillery and mortar barrage fire

to prevent the transfer of the Finnish troops to their prepared defence positions

to destroy the Vyborg railway yard, the Raivola and Rautu railway stations and the bridges over the Vuoksi River at Kiviniemi

to prevent road and railway transportations up to the line Vyborg - Käkisalmi

to provide cover for troops of the 21st and 23rd Armies, reserves, lines of communication and positions against enemy air attacks.

Air reconnaissance was to be extended to 150 kilometers beyond enemy lines, to the line Hiitola-Lappeenranta-Hamina.

The Baltic Navy Air Force flew several reconnaissance missions, a sea transport cover mission and a special mission to carry out an attack with two Il-2 ground regiments on defence positions at Valkeasaari.

After the initial success of the offensive the Finns were able to stop the Soviet advance at the Vuoksi River in July. The superiority in numbers proved to be inadequate and the race to Berlin was accelerating all the time. The Soviet Union started to remove its troops from the Karelian front to the Central European area. A cease-fire was agreed on with Finland on 4th September 1944, which meant that the summer 1944 offensive against Finland became the only one which the Soviet Union failed to carry through during the latter part of the war.

The situation in terms of numbers was very much the same at the end of the Continuation War as it had been in the Winter War. The Soviet Union had clear numerical superiority in the air and carried out massive bombings and continuous close support operations with its effective I1-2 ground attack planes. It also had a very dense, effective antiaircraft artillery in its ground troops and its air bases were well protected with anti-aircraft weapons, but as in the Winter War, they were unable to weaken the FAF fighter force, so that the capacity of the FAF fighter force actually increased during the hectic air battles of summer 1944, mostly because of minimal pilot losses combined with the delivery of new fighters from Germany. Almost all the Finnish top aces were fighting at the end of the war just as they had been at the beginning. Thus they were able to achieve local and temporal air superiority, while the bomber and reconnaissance units were similarly able to carry on their missions throughout.

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