Soviet Air Research Articles

China and the Dispatch of the Soviet Air Force: The Formation of the Chinese–Soviet–Korean Alliance in the Early Stage of the Korean War

China's entry into the Korean War, together with the involvement of the Soviet Air Force, constituted not only the base of Chinese and Soviet joint assistance to North Korea but also the formation of the Sino-Soviet–North Korean triangular alliance. Recently declassified Russian Defense Ministry archives show that Stalin wavered on dispatching the Soviet Air Force for fear of a direct confrontation with the US/UN forces. It was 12 days after Chinese troops entered the war that Stalin finally allowed the Soviet Air Force to provide air cover. New documents that shed light on this enormously significant historical process demonstrate that the Sino-Soviet–North Korean triangular relationship was extremely delicate and weak.

Storming the Stratosphere: Space Exploration, Soviet Culture, and the Arts from Lenin to Khrushchev's Times

AbstractBy the era of the Stalinist 1930s, a nationalistic nexus had been created between Soviet air flight (and eventually rocketry) feats and the ideological competition with the West. Russians had been fascinated with global air and rocket flight developments before Stalin's time; however, with the increasingly nationalistic tones of Russian culture in the 1930s and 1940s, the stratosphere also became a sphere of contestation with the West. While this scientific and cultural competition would be accelerated in the time of Khrushchev's Sputnik era, the Russian public still engaged in the process in its own manner that included both national pride and genuine interest from below as in other countries.

Soviet Support for Egypt's Intervention in Yemen, 1962–1963

Drawing on documents and memoirs in Russian and Arabic, this article tells the unknown story of Soviet-Egyptian cooperation in the early phases of the Yemeni Civil War, a war that broke out while much of the world's attention was focused on the Cuban missile crisis and the war between India and Pakistan. Egypt's fateful decision to intervene in the conflict was dependent on substantial Soviet backing, which strengthened the relationship between the USSR and Gamal Abdel Nasser's government in Egypt. In response to a plea from Nasser, Nikita Khrushchev authorized the military transport branch of the Soviet Air Force to embark on a clandestine airlift operation ferrying Egyptian troops into Yemen to shore up the new government there.

Forbidden Cross-border Vendetta: Spetsnaz Strike into Pakistan during the Soviet-afghan War

In 1986, Soviet Special Forces conducted an unauthorized strike into Pakistan while attempting to wipe out a guerrilla base. The Special Forces were pinned down and had to call for Soviet air strikes to extricate themselves from an untenable position. This article discusses the planning, conduct and consequences of the mission.

Completing the union: Alaska, Hawai'i, and the battle for statehood

As late as mid-1941 the two territories of Alaska and Hawaii were little known by most Americans. Alaska was seen as a frozen wasteland and Hawaii, an exotic outpost in the mid-Pacific with a multi-racial, particularly Asian, population. The bombing of Pearl Harbor in late 1941 and the capture of two Aleutian Islands in 1942 made the two territories central theatres of World War II. Thousands of Americans came to know Alaska and Hawaii as never before. Once the war ended both territories hoped that statehood would be their reward for such loyal wartime service. Their strategic locations pointed to an increased national involvement in the Pacific and Asia. The 49th and 50th states would eventually be admitted, but it took thirteen years, from 1946 to 1959, to do it. The long delay was caused by many of the events of the Cold War. Both territories became enmeshed in the national politics of anti-communism, radical labour movements, and Arctic policy to resist a Soviet air attack across the polar North. A cadre of statehood supporters emerged to make their case to the nation, including the young Daniel Inouye of Hawaii and Ted Stevens of Alaska, both of whom would become two of the most powerful senators in Congress.

Red Wings over the Yalu: China, the Soviet Union, and the Air War in Korea (review)

The Korean conflict was a pivotal event in China's modern military History, constituting an important experience for the newly formed People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF), not only as a test case for this fledgling service but also in the later development of Chinese air power. Xiaoming Zhang fills the gaps in the history of this conflict by basing his research on recently declassified Chinese and Russian archival materials and interviews with Chinese participants in the air war over Korea. Zhang's findings challenge conventional wisdom as he compares kill ratios and performance by all sides involved in the war, addresses how air power affected Beijing's decision to intervene, and touches on ground operations and truce negotiations during the conflict. Zhang also offers considerable materials on the training of Chinese aviators and the Soviet role in that training, on Soviet and Chinese air operations in Korea, and on diplomatic exchanges over Soviet military assistance to China.

Canadian space psychology: The future may be almost here.

It has been just over 41 years since Senior Lieutenant Yuri Gagarin of Soviet Air Force became first human to fly into space; 44 years since NASA established by an act of U.S. Congress; and 13 years since creation of Canadian Space Agency (CSA). Using Soviet/Russian and American space vehicles, more than 270 astronauts(1) from around world - including eight Canadians - have flown in space. final frontier has fascinated billions of people who only touched it through their reading or television watching. One of most frequently asked questions on websites of both NASA and CSA is, How do I become an astronaut?Aside from requirements of training, education, physical health and fitness, and a record of outstanding accomplishments in a variety of activities, one common answer to that question is: Pass psychological assessments. The Soviet space program pioneered these, as it pioneered human space flight itself. Gagarin, for example, was subjected to extremely rigorous training: physical, mental, and psychological. He underwent long periods in a sensory deprivation chamber, experiments with weightlessness, endurance in heat chambers and test flights under stress with every reaction monitored. One test to solve difficult mathematical equations while a loudspeaker blasted out answers (Russian Archives Online, 2002). Similar ordeals were faced by NASA's astronaut candidates (Santy, 1994). The process has also added a phrase to our everyday vocabulary, the right stuff, (Wolfe, 1978), which is that happy confluence of practical intelligence, emotional imperturbability, coolness under stress, physical toughness, rapid decision-making ability, courage, and indomitability that selectors were trying to find.The history of human beings in space is now in a gradual, but crucial, transition. It is evolving from Cold War competition to worldwide collaboration; from up-and-down missions, lasting a few hours or days, to weeks in Space Shuttle and months on a space station, and soon to years spent completing an expedition to Mars; from male astronauts with a background as military test and combat pilots to crews comprised of both sexes and a wide variety of occupations, nationalities, cultures, languages, and ages.The issues to be faced have shifted accordingly. With a few - although important - exceptions, we have answered most of questions about how to keep people alive and physically healthy in space, even for long periods. What we are less certain about is their psychological and social reactions to changed conditions of space flight, and relevant agencies are beginning to realize that this issue ranks with physical and medical dangers of space as a difficulty that must be overcome prior to extended human exploration of space. Changes in perceptual, motor, and cognitive functioning occur in microgravity; sleep is disrupted in almost all participants, leading to changes in mood and performance; prolonged, repetitive, and fatiguing physical exercise is needed to counteract muscle deconditioning and loss of bone density, but at same time exerts a price in mental and physical energy; and so on.There is considerable anecdotal evidence that problems have arisen as a result of prolonged confinement and other space capsule features involved in some missions and as a consequence of factors having to do with crew diversity. The former include lapses of attention, failures or refusals to carry out scheduled work, irritability toward crewmates and/or mission control staff, and a variety of individual mood and adjustment problems; latter have been manifested in derogatory comments and discriminatory behaviour on basis of other crewmates' sex, national origin, or professional specialty, and misunderstandings or negative feelings because of linguistic inadequacy or cultural differences. The interaction of two factors may exacerbate their joint impact. …

The master conspiracy of the john birch society: From communism to the new world order

During the height of the cold war and nuclear brinksmanship in the 1950s and 1960s, a number of self-styled crusaders and organizations took up the challenge begun by congressional committees and Joseph McCarthy to expose and defeat the communist menace threatening the United States and the free world. For example, the Reverend Carl McIntire preached his anti-communist message throughout the United States, published innumerable tracts such as Communism Is of the Devil, and through the 20th Century Reformation Hour, broadcast a thirty-minute radio message Monday through Friday. The Reverend Billy James Hargis formed the anti-communist Christian Crusade, toured the country with numerous rally's for God and against communism, and broadcast his messages on hundreds of radio stations. The largest, most thoroughly organized, and visible effort began when Robert Welch, a retired candy company executive, met in Indianapolis on December 9 and 10, 1958 with eleven handpicked businessmen. Welch delivered a two-day speech in which he identified the as Our immediate and most urgent anxiety. (1) He warned his business friends that: .. you have only a few more years before the country in which you live will become four separate provinces in a world-wide Communist dominion ruled by police-state methods from the Kremlin.... We are living, in America today, in such a fool's paradise as the people of China lived in twenty years ago, as the people of Czechoslovakia lived in a dozen years ago, as the people of North Vietnam lived in five years ago, and as the people of Iraq lived in only yesterday. (2) This speech became The Blue Book of the John Birch Society, named after a U.S. Array captain apparently killed by Communist Chinese soldiers at the end of World War II. Birch became the Society's first of the cold war, and Welch became the Society's unquestioned, authoritarian leader. (3) He had devoted the previous three years of his life to studying the world situation and the communist conspiracy, so he alone was capable of leading the life and death struggle against freedom's archenemy. At its peak in the mid-1960s, following two near-nuclear wars (the Berlin Crisis in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962) and when thousands of Americans were building bomb shelters in their basements and backyards in anticipation of a nuclear holocaust, the Birch Society had hundreds of chapters throughout the country, 100,000 members, 400 American Opinion bookstores to distribute and sell its literature, and an active cadre of speakers that crisscrossed the country. The Society's declared purpose was to educate the American people to the dangers of the communist conspiracy, expose communism and communists everywhere, and stop the conspiracy's planned takeover of the United States and the free world. The media and many American leaders branded the Society as an extremist, ultra-right, fringe group that saw communists behind every tree and under every bed and had the audacity to slander American heroes such as George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower, accusing them of being conscious or unwitting supporters of the communist conspiracy. Convinced that such criticisms came from those who were ignorant of the conspiracy or part of it, Welch and his followers remained committed to the cause. As the cold war began to thaw and the threat of nuclear war seemed increasingly remote, McIntire, Hargis, and other anti-communist speakers and groups disappeared from the scene. The Birch Society continued the crusade, but its membership declined during the Reagan-Bush years to below 50,000 members. It faced severe economic problems as income dropped and it tried to maintain headquarters on both the east and west coasts. (4) The Society suffered a demoralizing leadership vacuum when, first, its young, charismatic president, Congressman Lawrence McDonald, was, in their words, a martyr who murdered by assassination in the mid-air massacre of Korean Airlines Flight 007 in 1983 when Soviet fighter planes shot it down after it strayed into Soviet air space north of Japan. …

Wings, women, and war: Soviet airwomen in World War II combat

The Soviet Union was the first nation to allow women pilots to fly combat missions. During World War II the Red Air Force formed three all-female units - grouped into separate fighter, dive bomber and bomber regiments - while also recruiting other women to fly with mostly male units. Their story, fully recounted by Reina Pennington, honours this group of fearless and determined women. Pennington chronicles the creation, organization and leadership of these regiments as well as the experiences of the pilots, navigators, bomb loaders, mechanics, and others who made up their ranks, all within the context of the Soviet air war on the Eastern Front. These regiments flew a combined total of more than 30,000 combat sorties, produced at least 30 Heroes of the Soviet Union, and included at least two fighter aces. Among their ranks were women like Marina Raskova (the Soviet Ameila Earhart), a renowned aviator who persuaded Stalin in 1941 to establish the all-women regiments; the daredevil night witches who flew ramshackle biplanes on nocturnal bombing missions over German frontlines; and fighter aces like Liliia Litviak, whose 12 kills are largely unknown in the West. Here, too, is the story of Alexander Gridnev, a fighter pilot twice arrested by the Soviet secret police before he was chosen to command the women's fighter regiment. Pennington draws upon personal interviews and the Soviet archives to detail the recruitment, training and combat lives of these women. Mixing anecdote with analysis, her work should find a wide readership among scholars and buffs interested in the history of aviation, World War II, or the Russian military as well as anyone concerned with the contentious debates surrounding military and combat service for women.

Too Little, Too Late: An Analysis of Hitler's Failure in August 1942 to Damage Soviet Oil Production

EVEN before Operation Barbarossa petered out in December 1941, Germany's oil reserves were severely depleted. Adolf Hitler worried that his armed forces would soon grind to a halt for want of petroleum products. During the last months of 1941 and the first of 1942, economic considerations played as much of a role in the formulation of a new strategy as did the run-down state of the eastern armies and air fleets. Hitler feared heavy Soviet bombing attacks on Rumanian oilfields, his main source of oil, and knew that the Reich's reserves were almost exhausted. Consequently, he considered the protection of the Rumanian oilfields and the acquisition of new sources of oil crucial if he were to wage a prolonged war against the growing list of nations he opposed.1 He therefore formulated Fall Blau (Case Blue), a major campaign for summer 1942. This aimed first, through preliminary offensives in the Crimea, to protect Rumanian oil centres from Soviet air attacks, and second, through a powerful thrust to the Don River and then into the Caucasus, to deliver that oil-rich region into German hands. The capture of

Russia Confronts Chechnya: Roots of a Separatist Conflict

Russia Confronts Chechnya: Roots of a Separatist Conflict by John B. Dunlop (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, xi, 234 pp, $54.95 cloth, $18.95 paper). Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus by Carlotta Gall and Thomas de Waal (New York: New York University Press, 1998, xiv, 416 pp, $39.50). Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power by Anatol Lieven (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998, xii, 436 pp, $57.95 cloth, $25.60 paper). Prisoner of the Mountains directed by Sergei Bodrov (Orion Pictures, 1997, 99 minutes).In November 1994 Boris Yeltsin, the president of Russia, was worried about his standing in the opinion polls. Elections to the State Duma the previous year had not gone well, and the legislature was now dominated by a 'red-brown' opposition of old-line communists and nationalists like Vladimir Zhirinovskii's somewhat misleadingly named Liberal Democratic party. Meanwhile, chronic economic difficulties, rising crime, and increasingly flagrant corruption continued to erode Yeltsin's popularity. Even more worrisome, in the Caucasus region on Russia's southern border, Islamic separatists were threatening the Russian Federation's fragile unity.The crisis in the south centred on Chechnya, a small Muslim nation on the northern edge of the Caucasus mountain range that had declared its independence from Moscow in November 1991, shortly after the collapse of the USSR. Ironically, Yeltsin initially encouraged Chechen separatism in his campaign to weaken the authority of his archrival, the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Although Yeltsin now opposed the move, over the next two years he did little to re-establish Moscow's authority over the breakaway republic. There were far bigger fish to fry at home, such as the struggle with the Supreme Soviet that had ended in a bloody showdown in October 1993.As for Chechnya, President Dzhokhar Dudaev, a charismatic former Soviet air force general with a penchant for melodramatic rhetoric and Cosa Nostra couture, had proven spectacularly unfit to govern his infant regime. With an unusually high number of BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes racing about the streets, there were many outward signs of prosperity in the capital, Grozny. Yet much of the republic's civic apparatus, such as schools and hospitals, had all but ceased to function. In the words of a British journalist: 'Dudaev seemed much more interested in the idea of calling Chechnya independent than in the practicality of making it work.' By 1994, Chechens were growing increasingly unhappy with their leader's laissez-faire style. There were many signs that his many domestic political opponents might soon force Dudaev out of office.Yeltsin was not prepared to wait. His own heavy-handed efforts to encourage Dudaev's foes had ended ignominiously on 26 November 1994, when an attempt to seize Grozny by opposition forces reinforced with Russian armour was easily quashed. The humiliation of this Caucasian Bay of Pigs only further encouraged hard-liners in the Kremlin. At the same time, although the presidential election was still more than a year away, it seemed that decisive action would surely boost Yeltsin's sagging political fortunes. One leading official reasoned: 'It is not only a question of the integrity of Russia. We need a small victorious war to raise the president's ratings.' After all, only two months earlier United States troops had easily occupied the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, in a similar operation to restore 'legitimacy' there. The Russian minister of defence, Pavel Grachev, boasted that one paratroop brigade would need no more than two hours to secure Grozny.General Grachev proved to be too optimistic. On 31 December, a day that happened to coincide with the minister's birthday, some 6,000 Russian ground troops launched a major assault on the Chechen capital. Even though Dudaev's men had done little to prepare the city's defences, it would take seven weeks of vicious urban combat and heavy artillery strikes to drive them out of their capital. …

Falcons or kites? The red army air force in the soviet‐Finnish war

No page of Soviet military history has been more obscure than the real nature and course of the Soviet‐Finnish War of 1939–1940. For years the West had to rely on German‐based accounts of this conflict whose course and outcome proved so embarrassing to the Soviet state. Only recently have Russian archival releases provided the raw materials with which to reconstruct the true nature of this conflict. In this article Pavel Aptekar draws upon his keen research skills to reconstruct the role of the Soviet Air Force in this once obscure conflict.

The forgotten missiles: The Soviet air force and nuclear GLCMs

Ground Launch Cruise Missiles (GLCM) are the most obscure of the tactical nuclear weapons of the former Soviet Air Force. Deployed in small numbers, they were overshadowed by the Army's tactical ballistic missiles. Yet they present an intriguing mystery, as they represented the most numerous nuclear weapon deployed on Cuba during the 1962 Missile Crisis. Their presence on Cuba was not recognized by US intelligence at the time, nor in most accounts of the crisis since. This article provides the first detailed account in English of their development and deployment.

Casualty Projections for the U.S. Invasions of Japan, 1945-1946: Planning and Policy Implications

D. M. Giangreco is an editor for the U.S. Army’s professional journal, Military Review, published by the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He has authored five books and written on such topics as the Falkland Islands’ sovereignty question, decentralization of the Soviet Air Force command and control structure, and Persian Gulf pipeline construction to circumvent the Strait of Hormuz bottleneck for various Capital Cities Communications publications.

Kerosene Contamination at Former Soviet Air Base Undergoing Cleanup

Kerosene Contamination at Former Soviet Air Base Undergoing Cleanup

Aerospace defense requirements in post‐Soviet Russia

Abstract Throughout 1989–1991, the officer corps of the Soviet Air Defense Forces, the PVO, held a lengthy discussion of the missions and roles of air defense in a changing strategic environment. As a result of this discussion, the Soveit PVO mission was changed from one of broad perimeter defense to more limited missions of selective area and point defense against attacks from air and space. This change would require increased mobility and modernization; however, the demise of the Soviet Union and continuing economic disarray makes such a transition to a modernized air defense nearly impossible. It may be the desire to achieve such modernization that led the Russian government in January 1992 to seek cooperation with the United States in a “Global Protection System.”.

Remembering War: A U.S.-Soviet Dialogue.

At a time when 40% of Americans have forgotten that the U.S. and the Soviet Union were allies during World War II, Remembering War comes as a timely and evocative reminder of that critical alliance. Here are juxtaposed the voices of Soviet and American citizens, some famous (Elliott Roosevelt, Gheorghi Arbatov), many unknown, recalling in vivid detail what life was like during the war years. Their stories, supplemented by dozens of rare photographs from Soviet and American archives, draw a vibrant portrait of both the battlefronts and the homefronts, illuminating the war's complex legacy in the relations between our two countries. Inspired by a U.S.-Soviet television exchange, Remembering War offers an unprecedented dialogue among Soviets and Americans, who present recollections of both shared and contrasting experiences, of mutual respect and distrust. A Soviet woman recalls how she and other teenage girls formed their own combat unit, and an American woman pilot tells of ferrying fighter planes to the Soviet air force. Civilians present the sharp contrasts between the two home fronts, and soldiers from both armies remember the famous meeting on the Elbe. Numerous striking photographs capture the drama and poignancy of these moments. These voices and images remind us that only a few years before McCarthyism, Russian War Relief was the most popular charity in America, and the Red Army marched with American supplies. The book also captures the bitter reality of war and the tensions between the two allies. Soviets such as writer Grigory Baklanov voice deep resentment at long delays in the allied invasion of France, and Americans detail and criticize Moscow's secrecy and paranoia. For the first time, Soviets discuss Stalin's actions, the secret protocols of the Soviet-Nazi pact of 1939, and other controversial aspects of their involvement in the war. Many of the photos offer chilling testimony to the horrors of the war, matched by bleak accounts from the survivors of Stalingrad. In Remembering War, Soviet commentator Vladimir Pozner and American producer and professor Helene Keyssar (key figures in the television exchange) have produced a truly remarkable book, a unique reminder of the stark contrasts and forgotten unity in our wartime experiences. Published simultaneously in the U.S. and the Soviet Union, it offers a powerful exploration of the war's legacy and a testament to a renewed spirit of cooperation.

Changing missions for Soviet space, air, and naval forces

Changing missions for Soviet space, air, and naval forces

Redeeming Vietnam: Techno-Thriller Novels of the 1980s

In 1978, General Sir John Hackett, former commander in chief of the British Army of the Rhine and NATO's Northern Army Group, joined forces with six other leading British generals and admirals. Together they wrote The Third World War: August 1985, a novel that vividly describes a Soviet air and land attack on Western Europe and naval battles in the North Atlantic.' Both the Soviet attack and NATO's response remain below the threshold, until the Soviets destroy Birmingham, England, killing 300,000 people and wounding an additional 250,000. In retaliation, NATO launches four nuclear missiles at Minsk. Its destruction sparks national liberation movements throughout Eastern Europe and the non-Russian republics of the Soviet Union, and leads to a coup in the Kremlin. According to Hackett et al., WW III lasts eighteen days and ends with a complete Western victory. The Third World War received rave reviews in England. In the United States, New York Times military correspondent Drew Middleton described it as a compelling account of the utmost seriousness, fascination, realism, readability, and relevance. By 1979

Soviet strategic air defense: The struggle for competence

Abstract : All militaries face the problem of training in peace to prepare for war. Peacetime desires for safety, comfort and the accommodation of inertia frequently permit a certain 'formalism' to creep into peacetime training. 'Formalism' or 'pencil-whipping' the training schedules comes to prominence when the shams of peacetime operations are stripped away by real wars or war-like incidents. The Soviet Air Defense Force, hereafter PVO, has been especially unlucky in the variety of incidents that have highlighted training deficiencies. In the Brezhnev period, incidents of incompetence could be resolved by simple punishment of the people involved and no wider implications were drawn. In a period of glasnost and political debate, wider implications are always drawn. In a period of glasnost and political debate, wider implications are always drawn. PVO is working hard to overcome the widespread impression of PVO incompetence highlighted when Matthias Rust landed in Red Square. PVO must demonstrate its day-to-day competence and prudent expenditure of resources in order to assure its access to continued support for new systems and a good share of the best conscripts and officer cadets.