Category Air Warfare

Accidently Downing Airliners

Iran has admitted that an Iranian air defense system downed the Ukrainian airliner yesterday. Sadly, this is becoming an all too common occurrence. The major incidents like this include:

Ukrainian Airlines, 8 January 2020 – It was shot down by an Iranian missile (picture shown above). 176 people killed.

Malaysian Flight MH-17, 17 July 2014 – Shot down by a Russian air defense missile. Russian claims the Ukrainians shot it down, but not too many people outside of Russia believe this. 296 people killed.

Siberia Airlines Flight 1812, 4 October 2001 — A Russian airliner shot down over the Black Sea by Ukrainian air defense missile while conducting training exercise. 78 people killed.

Iran Air Flight 655, 3 July 1988 — An Iranian airliner going from Iran to Saudi Arabia was shot down by a missile from the USS Vincennes. Even though it was an accident, many in Iran still claim it was deliberate. The Iranian newspaper Tehran Times recently published a letter asking Captain Rogers, the former CO of the Vincennes, to “confess.” 290 people killed.

Korea Air Lines Flight 007, 1 September 1983 — Shot down by the Soviet Union. In this case, the plane made a navigation error and wandered into Soviet air space. The intercepting Soviet pilots had sight of the plane and were still ordered to shot it down. 269 people killed, including a U.S. congressman.

There are a lot more incidents than those. Just to list some of them (I do not know if this list is exhaustive):

 

Date……………Incident…………Plane…..Locale……………Killed….Perpetrator

24 Aug 1938…..Kweilin Incident…DC-2……near Hong Kong…..14….Japan aircraft

14 June 1940….Kaleva…………..Ju-52……Baltic Sea……………9….USSR DB-3T

29 Oct 1940……Chungking………DC-2……China………………..9…..Japan aircraft

3 March 1942….KNILM PK-AFV…DC-3……Australia…………….4….Japan A6M Zero

1 June 1943……BOAC Flt 777…..DC-3……Bay of Biscay……..17….German Ju-88C-6

22 Oct 1943……AB Aero…………DC-3……Sweden…………….13…German Ju-88

 

23 July 1954……Cathy Pacific…….DC-4……Hainan Island……10……Chinese La-11

27 July 1955……El Al Flight 402….L-149…..Bulgaria……………58…..Bulgaria MIG-15

 

30 June 1962….Aeroflot Flt 902….Tu-104A..Russia…………….84…..USSR missile

21 Feb 1973……Libyan Flt 114……727………Sinai……………108…..Israeli F-4s

 

20 April 1978….Korean Flt 902…..707……..Russia……………….2…….USSR Su-15

3 Sep 1978……Rhodesia 825…Viscount….Rhodesia…………..48…….ZIPRA Strela-2

12 Feb 1978….Rhodesia 827….Viscount…Rhodesia…………..59…….ZIPRA Strela-2

27 June 1980…Itavia Flt 870…….DC-9…….Italy………………..81…….Missile?

8 Feb 1980…….Angola D2-TYC…Yak-40…Angola……………..19……..Zambian J-6

1 Sep 1983……Korean Flt 007…..747………USSR……………269…….USSR Su-15

 

24 Feb 1985….Polar 3……………Do-228…..West Sahara……..3………Polisario

4 Sep 1985……Bakhtar YA-BAM..An-26……Afghanistan……..52………SAM

11 June 1987…Bakhtar YA-BAL…An-26…..Afghanistan………53………SAM

14 Oct 1987……Zimex…………….L-100…..Angola……………..8………unknown

6 Nov 1987…….Air Malawi……….Skyvan….Mozambique…….10………?

3 July 1988…….Iran Air 655………A300……Persian Gulf……290……..U.S. RIM-66

 

8 Dec 1988……US AID………….DC-7………W. Sahara………5……Polisario

27 March 1992…………………….Yak-40…….Armenia………..0……Azerbaijan Su-25

21 Sep 1993….Transair…………Tu-134……..Georgia………..27…..Abkhazia Strela 2

22 Sep 1993….Transair…………Tu-154……..Georgia………108…..Abkhazia SAM

23 Sep 1993….Transair…………Tu-134A……Georgia………..1..Abkhazia BM-21 Grad

6 April 1994………………………..Falcon 50….Rwanda……….12……SAM

29 Sep 1998….Lionair 602…….An-24RV……Sri Lanka…….55..Tamil Tiger MANPADS

20 April 2001………………..Cessna A185E…Peru…………….2…Peru Cessna A-37B

4 Oct 2001……Siberian 1812…Tu-154………Black Sea…….78…….Ukrainian S-200

22 Nov 2003…DHL OO-DLL….A300………..Iraq……………….0…….SAM

9 Jan 2007………………………….An-26……….Iraq………….34…Islamic Army missile?

23 Mar 2007…TransAVIA……..Il-76…………Somalia………….11…..Hizbul Islam 9K38?

17 July 2014…Malaysia MH-17…777……….Ukraine………..298..Russian 9M38 SA-11

8 Jan 2020…..Ukraine Flt 752….737………..Iran…………….176….Iran SA-15

 

Now….between 1938-1983 (45 years) there were 16 incidents resulting on the loss of 804 lives. Of these, 12 were caused by hostile aircraft (some firing air-to-air missiles), three by surface-to-air missiles and one possibly by an errant air-to-air missile. Two of the airliners shot down by missiles were clearly accidental. From 1985 to 2020 (45 years) there were 20 incidents resulting in the loss of 1,223 lives. Of these, two were caused by aircraft and 14 caused by surface-to-air missiles.

 

Aces at Kursk – Summation

Yak-9 at war memorial, northwest of Yakovlevo, Belrorod-Oboyan road (1995)

I do have a completed manuscript that I am marketing. I have done a number of posts recently related to my work on this. Let me list them below:

145 or 10?

So did Kozhedub shoot down 62, 64 or 66 planes?

5th Guards Fighter Regiment, 7 July 1943

The 728th Fighter Regiment on 16 July 1943

Soviet versus German kill claims at Kursk

So What Was Driving the Soviet Kill Claims?

Aces at Kursk – Chapters

Aces at Kursk – Chapters

Yak-9 at war memorial, northwest of Yakovlevo, Belrorod-Oboyan road (1995)

The following is the list of chapters and estimated page count for the book I am finishing: Aces at Kursk: The Belgorod Offensive Air War

Front Matter: 12 pages

Acknowledgements: 4 pages

Prologue: 16 pages

.

Chapter One: The Strategic Air Campaign: 12 pages

Chapter Two: Both Sides Prepare: 23 pages

Chapter Three: The Strike at Dawn: 5 July 1943 (Monday): 18 pages

Chapter Four: The Fight for Air Superiority: 6-7 July 1943: 34 pages

Chapter Five: The Air War Continues: 8-9 July 1943: 18 pages

Chapter Six: A Less Intense Air War Continues: 10-18 July 1943: 34 pages

Chapter Seven: The Last Air Offensive: 15 pages

.

Appendix I: German and Soviet Terminology: 8 pages

Appendix II: Air Campaign Statistics: 77 pages

Appendix III: Commander Biographies: 9 pages

.

Photo Section 1: The Weapons of War: 28 pages

Photo Section 2: The Photo Reconnaissance 35 pages

Photo Section 3: Commanders and Pilots: 8 pages

.

Map Section 4 or 29 pages (depending on whether I include the 1:50000 1942 topo maps).

Bibliography: 12 pages

Index: 10 pages

Biography: 1

.

It comes in at around 378-403 pages, including 94 pages of new text. I am effectively done with the book and am now trying to line up a publisher for it. I usually finish my books before I go looking for a publisher.

 

So What Was Driving the Soviet Kill Claims?

As pointed out in my last two posts, it appears that the Soviet air force at Kursk (in the south) from 4 to 18 July 1943 claimed more eight times as many planes shot down as the Germans actually lost. This was in an air battle that was larger than the Battle of Britain. The graph above is from page 839 of my original Kursk book and is repeated on page 285 of my new Prokhorovka book. To quote (from page 840/286):

…the Soviet claims do not appear to have been related to the German casualties. Instead, if one compares Soviet losses to Soviet claims of German losses one does find a fit. The pattern is fairly clear, the Soviets always claimed more casualties than they lost. With the Soviets losing 658 planes, and claiming 928 German kills, we are looking at the Soviets claiming about 40 percent more kills than they lost. This over-claiming is fairly consistent from day to day, and as shown elsewhere [in the book], is not a problem unique to the Soviet air force [it was also the case for the Soviet Army]. 

A briefing based upon this data was presented to Col. Fyodor Sverdlov in October 1994, who was a staff officer for the Eleventh Guards Army at Kursk and later a professor at the Frunze Military Academy. After presenting the chart showing Soviet claims to German losses, Sverdlov stated that “the enemy always suffers 30% more losses than you.” 

Colonel Sverdlov knew from his experiences in the war (and he was there from the Battle of Moscow to the end), that they regularly reported more German losses than they suffered. This was just standard procedure. I also did the same comparison in my books for Soviet claims of tanks killed compared to German losses, and found the same pattern (I may post about that at some point). Yet I regularly encounter passages in various books on the Eastern Front that quote Soviet claims of German losses without cross-checking these claims to the German records.

Soviet versus German kill claims at Kursk

As discussed on my post on the Soviet 728th Fighter Regiment, the Soviet air force at Kursk (in the south) appears to claim more than eight times as many planes shot down as the Germans actually lost. The graph above is from page 839 of my original books and is repeated on page 285 of my new Prokhorovka book.

So how did the Germans do?

To quote from my books (pages 839, 840 and 844 in my Kursk book or pages 285, 286 and 290 in my Prokhorovka book):

The reverse tendency is not displayed by the Germans….This comes out to a total of 658 claimed kills by the VIII Air Corps compared to 658 actual losses by the Second and Seventeenth Air Armies. It would appear that at least for this two-week period, German reporting of air claims was reasonably accurate while the Soviet claims were outrageously high….This does bring into question the validity of all Soviet ace totals. On the other hand, the fact that German claims for 4 to 18 July were almost equal to Soviet losses during that time does provide some level of confidence in the accuracy of German claims. Still, one notes that the Luftwaffe claimed 220 planes shot down by air and 40 by antiaircraft on the 5th of July, when the Soviets reported losing 187, so one should not place too much reliance on the accuracy of these claims. Yet, based upon this limited sample, it does appear that the German ace claims are usually valid while the Soviet claims are clearly inflated, and possibly inflated by several times.

The 728th Fighter Regiment on 16 July 1943

Well after the original Kursk Data Base project was done, I contracted a researcher to pull up some Soviet air regiment records from the battle. We had originally built our database on the Second, Fifth and Seventeenth Air Army records, but always wondered what the individual air records held. So as an experiment, I pulled up the records for the 5th Guards, 27th, 240th, 270th and 728th Fighter Regiments for 4-18 July 1943. They were a sampling from all three air armies and all rather famous air regiments. At the time, I was busy with other projects (our urban warfare studies) so set them aside. I finally got around to going through them and translating them over a decade later.

The regiment records mostly just record how many sorties they flew that day and too where, what their strength was, how many planes they claimed to have shot down and how many planes they lost. It is their claims of planes shot down that got my attention.

As I pointed out in page 839 of my original Kursk book (and page 285 of my Prokhorovka book), the Soviet air force at Kursk (in the south) appeared to claim more than eight times as many planes shot down as the Germans actually lost. The graph above is from those pages. Was not sure whether this was optimism or deliberate overstatement at the highest levels of command or something that trickled up from the lower levels. It appears to be something that trickled up from the lower levels. An air regiment reports to an air division which often reports to an air corps which then reports to the air army. So, looking through the regiment air records, what stood out was that some of these regiments had wildly optimistic kill claims.

Let me just give you one example, this is from the 728th Fighter Regiment on 16 July 1943. They claimed on that day to have shot down 13 planes, 7 Me-109s, 5 Ju-87s (Stukas) and one He-123. Their listing by name of who killed what and where is provided below. The actual reported German losses for their VIII Air Corps this day by the Luftwaffe air liaison officer was three planes: 1 Fw-189 and 2 Me-109s. The quartermaster reports for 16 July indicate only one plane lost, an Hs-129. So, it appears that not only is the Soviet regiment claims optimistic, but in fact, they may not have made a single kill that day!

This is just one of around 26 fighter regiments in the Second Air Army in July 1943. Also other air units and anti-aircraft artillery were involved in the fighting. There were a total of 64 Soviet claimed air combat kills on 16 July (see chart). Now this is the worse case for the five fighter regiments I looked at, but there are many other similar cases. Quite simply, the habit of over-claiming was common among Soviet air units at all levels.

The actual claims by the 728th Fighter Regiment for 16 July 1943:

Date        Pilot                                    Plane                   Notes

16 July    Captain Vorozheikin           1 Me-109

16 July    Lt. Sachkov                         1 Me-109

16 July    Jr. Lt. Vyibornov                 1 Me-109

16 July    Jr. Lt. Morye                       1 Me-109

16 July    Major Petrushin                  2 Ju-87s                Fell in the area of Shakhovo

16 July    Jr. Lt. Shiryayev                 1 Ju-87                  Fell in the area of Shakhovo

16 July    Lt. Kozlovskii                      1 Ju-87                  Fell in the area of Shakhovo

16 July    Jr. Lt. Pakhomov                1 Ju-87                  Fell in the area of Shakhovo

16 July    by the group                       1 He-123               Fell in the area of Dalnii Dolzhik

16 July    Jr. Lt. Milashenko               1 Me-109              Fell in the area of Pravorot

16 July    Jr. Lt. Karnaukhov              1 Me-109              Fell in the area of Pravorot

16 July    Lt Khudyakov                     1 Me-109              Fell in the area of Pravorot

 

Captain Vorozheikin is Arsenii Vasilyevich Vorozheikin, the sixth highest scoring allied ace of the war with 52 claimed kills and 13 shared kills.

5th Guards Fighter Regiment, 7 July 1943

La-7, Kursk Battle Museum, Belgorod (photo by Christopher A. Lawrence)

The Fifth Guards Fighter Regiment was the highest scoring Soviet air regiment of the war with 739 victories claimed. It was lead by twice Hero of the Soviet Union, Major Vasilii Zaitsev (1911-1961) who was credited with 34 kills during the war (and 15 or 19 shared kills). The unit’s deputy command was ace Lt. Vatalii Popkov (1922-2010), also twice Hero of the Soviet Union who was credited with 41 kills during the war.

On 7 July the regiment’s records report the following kills:

Date    Pilot                            Plane               Time                           Notes

7 July   Lt. Shumilin                Me-109G          0710-0817

7 July   Jr. Lt. Belyakov          Me-109             0855-0945

7 July   Jr. Lt. Glinkin              Fw-190             0855-0945

7 July   Lt. Bayevskii               Me-109            1440-1610

7 July   Lt. Yaremenko            Ju-88               1730-1835

7 July   Jr. Lt. Glinkin              He-111             1730-1835

7 July   Captain Dmitriyev      Ju-52                1730-1835

7 July   Major Pindyur             Me-109             2000-2110

7 July   Lt. Stokolov                Me-109             2000-2110

7 July   Jr. Lt. Bugreyev          Me-109             2000-2110

7 July   Jr. Lt. Kalsin               Me-109             2000-2110

7 July   Jr. Lt. Sverlov             Me-109             2000-2100                   ***

 

It also reports the following losses:

Date    Pilot                            Plane               Time                           Notes

7 July   Lt. Shumilin                                         1730-1835                   *

7 July   Jr. Lt. Belyakov                                   1730-1835                   **

7 July   Jr. Lt. Sidorets                                    1730-1835                   Did not return

7 July   Jr. Lt. Sverlov                                      2000-2100                   ***

 

* Lt. Shumilin after an air battle made a forced landing on wheels in the area of Mikhailovka. The pilot was seriously wounded.

** Hit by fire from antiaircraft artillery and an Fw-190, pilot cross the front line and made a landing. Pilot was wounded in the legs. Plane was burned on the ground by German artillery and mortar fire.

*** but he himself was caught in fire by two Me-109s, as a result, the La-5 burned and the pilot died.

            So for 7 July, they claimed 8 Me-109s and four other planes at a loss of four planes, two pilots lost and two pilots wounded. On 7 July, the German VIII Air Corps lost 4 or 5 Me-109s (see Tables IV.27 and IV.28 of my Kursk book, page 1416). This was but one fighter regiment of the 26 fighter regiments in the Second and Seventeenth Air Armies on 7 July 1943.

So did Kozhedub shoot down 62, 64 or 66 planes?

Ivan Kozhedub was the highest scoring allied ace of World War II, having been credited with 62 or 64 victories. Hard to nail down the exact number. Most sources say 62, including Wikipedia. Many sources also credit him with also shooting down two U.S. P-51s. The Wikipedia article then lists his victories based upon the book Stalin’s Falcons by Mikhail Bykov. That listing records 64 planes, but no P-52s. The Wikipedia article also has a section of the “Alleged shooting down of two USAAF P-51 fighters.” That write up does not appear to accept the story.

A number of other sources also credit him with 64 claimed kills, or 64 claimed kills and two P-51s. Sort of mystified why this is an issue. I assume there are records of his claims somewhere.

So….what do we have out there:

……………………….Claimed Kills

Source…………….62…….62+2……..64……..64+2………63…….and 29 group kills
Wikipedia………….Y……….?…………..Y………..?
Seidl…………………………..Y
Polak……………….Y
Bykov……………………………………….Y………..?
Hardesty……………………………………Y

Red Falcons……….Y…………………….Y……….Y…………Y………..Y

 

Seidl is Stalin’s Eagles by Hans D. Seidl’s, Polak is Stalin’s Falcons by Tomas Polak with Christopher Shores, Bykov is Soviet Aces 1941-1945: The Victories of Stalin’s Falcons by Mikhail Bykov, Hardesty is Red Phoenix Rising by Von Hardesty and Ilya Grinberg, and Red Falcons is the Red Falcons website here: http://airaces.narod.ru/all1/kojedub.htm. Maybe the title of this post should have been “bird droppings.”

It is, of course, a different issue than the validity of those 62+ claims, which can be justifiably challenged. I will post about that later.

145 or 10?

A German Henschel Hs-126 (1940 or earlier)

As some are aware, I am working on a book on the air battles during the Battle of Kursk. On 2 June 1943, the Germans organized a mass raid on the Kursk railway station using aircraft from the 1st Air Division of the Sixth Air Fleet and from the VIII Air Corps of the Fourth Air Fleet. The Sixth Air Fleet sent in 95 bomber sorties and 64 “destroyer” sorties (Me-110s) during the day, with heavy fighter cover. That night, they hit the Kursk area again with another 52 bomber sorties. The VIII Air Corps sent in 138 bomber missions during the day and 150 more during the night.

The German Air Force (Luftwaffe) burned its records towards the end of WWII, so in most cases there are not detailed records of their activity. In this case, there was. In the files of the Second Army, west of Kursk, are the records of the air liaison officer. It is in the National Archives, in the Captured German Records collection, file T312, roll R1234. The sortie counts given above are from those records. They also report their losses as 13 aircraft. The VIII Air Corps lost 1 Hs-126, 1 Ju-87, 3 He-111s and 1 Me-109 during the day and a Ju-88 at night. The Sixth Air Fleet lost 4 Ju-88s, 1 Me-110 and 1 Fw-190 during the day and nothing at night. I state in my book that “German losses connected with these raids were about 10 aircraft (2 percent losses)” as I am guessing that some of those 13 planes may have been lost in other operations (for example, the lost Hs-126 was probably doing reconnaissance). See Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka, page 303. E. R. Hooton in the book War Over the Steppes, page 200, states that the Germans lost 17 bombers. He does not footnote his sources. Bergstrom in Kursk: The Air Battle: July 1943, page 21, states that “Seventeen of these aircraft were shot down and destroyed and another eight sustained severe battle damage.” His source is the Luftwaffe Quartermaster reports. These claims from the Luftwaffe Quartermaster reports probably include losses from other causes (like mechanical, accidents and returned planes that were later scavenged for parts) and other missions.

On the other hand, another book written by two U.S. based authors state that “Certain Soviet sources list 145 German aircraft down (104 by VVS fighters and 41 by antiaircraft fire), with a modest loss of 27 Soviet fighters.”  They footnote the source as a Soviet-era book from 1977. I had found the same claim of 145 kills in a Soviet-era Progress Press publication from 1974.

I am not breaking new ground by pointing out that Soviet-era publications often exaggerated enemy casualties. As discussed in my Kursk book, the units involved often made these outrageous claims and this it what was in their unit records. Therefore these claims ended up in the Soviet historical accounts.

Needless to say, one needs to cross-check all Soviet-era claims before they are used in a book. It is not enough just to say “Certain Soviet sources…” and ignor the German records. It certainly does give the wrong impressions of the operations, especially to the casual reader. Yet this is done repeatedly in this book, even though it was updated and published in 2012.

Battles versus Campaigns (for Validation)

So we created three campaign databases. One of the strangest arguments I have heard against doing validations or testing combat models to historical data, is that this is only one outcome from history. So you don’t know if model is in error or if this was a unusual outcome to the historical event. Someone described it as the N=1 argument. There are lots of reasons why I am not too impressed with this argument that I may enumerate in a later blog post. It certainly might apply to testing the model to just one battle (like the Battle of 73 Easting in 1991), but these are weeks-long campaign databases with hundreds of battles. One can test the model to these hundreds of points in particular in addition to testing it to the overall result.

In the case of the Kursk Data Base (KDB), we have actually gone through the data base and created from it 192 division-level engagements. This covers every single combat action by every single division during the two week offensive around Belgorod. Furthermore, I have listed each and every one of these as an “engagement sheet’ in my book on Kursk. The 192 engagement sheets are a half-page or page-long tabulation of the strengths and losses for each engagement for all units involved. Most sheets cover one day of battle. It took considerable work to assemble these. First one had to figure out who was opposing whom (especially as unit boundaries never match) and then work from there. So, if someone wants to test a model or model combat or do historical analysis, one could simply assemble a database from these 192 engagements. If one wanted more details on the engagements, there are detailed breakdowns of the equipment in the Kursk Data Base and detailed descriptions of the engagements in my Kursk book. My new Prokhorovka book (release date 1 June), which only covers the part of the southern offensive around Prokhorovka from the 9th of July, has 76 of those engagements sheets. Needless to say, these Kursk engagements also make up 192 of the 752 engagements in our DLEDB (Division Level Engagement Data Base).  A picture of that database is shown at the top of this post.

So, if you are conducting a validation to the campaign, take a moment and check the results to each division to each day. In the KDB there were 17 divisions on the German side, and 37 rifle divisions and 10 tank and mechanized corps (a division-sized unit) on the Soviet side. The data base covers 15 days of fighting. So….there are around 900 points of daily division level results to check the results to. I drawn your attention to this graph:

There are a number of these charts in Chapter 19 of my book War by Numbers. Also see:

Validating Attrition

The Ardennes database is even bigger. There was one validation done by CAA (Center for Army Analysis) of its CEM model (Concepts Evaluation Model) using the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Bases (ACSDB). They did this as an overall comparison to the campaign. So they tracked the front line trace at the end of the battle, and the total tank losses during the battle, ammunition consumption and other events like that. They got a fairly good result. What they did not do was go into the weeds and compare the results of the engagements. CEM relies on inputs from ATCAL (Attrition Calculator) which are created from COSAGE model runs. So while they tested the overall top-level model, they really did not test ATCAL or COSAGE, the models that feed into it. ATCAL and COSAGE I gather are still in use. In the case of Ardennes you have 36 U.S. and UK divisions and 32 German divisions and brigades over 32 days, so over 2,000 division days of combat. That is a lot of data points to test to.

Now we have not systematically gone through the ACSDB and assembled a record for every single engagement there. There would probably be more than 400 such engagements. We have assembled 57 engagements from the Battle of the Bulge for our division-level database (DLEDB). More could be done.

Finally, during our Battle of Britain Data Base effort, we recommended developing an air combat engagement database of 120 air-to-air engagements from the Battle of Britain. We did examine some additional mission specific data for the British side derived from the “Form F” Combat Reports for the period 8-12 August 1940. This was to demonstrate the viability of developing an engagement database from the dataset. So we wanted to do something similar for the air combat that we had done with division-level combat. An air-to-air engagement database would be very useful if you are developing any air campaign wargame. This unfortunately was never done by us as the project (read: funding) ended.

As it is we actually have three air campaign databases to work from, the Battle of Britain data base, the air component of the Kursk Data Base, and the air component of the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base. There is a lot of material to work from. All it takes it a little time and effort.

I will discuss the division-level data base in more depth in my next post.