Soviet Air Power of the Cold War

By Michael Green

At the peak of the Cold War in the 1950s the Soviet Union possessed some 12,000 aircraft, making it the largest air force of all the protagonists. By the 1990s this had declined to around 8,000, the reduction largely reflecting the increase in aircraft capability.

As well as fighters and bombers, the Soviet inventory included trainers, transports, seaplanes, electronic warfare and ground attack aircraft, as well as an impressive helicopter fleet, notably the Mi-24 ‘Hind’ gunship and the massive Homer transport.

The Tu-4 ‘Bull’ was the first Russian nuclear-capable bomber, a copy of the US B-29, which was followed by their range of jet bombers, the Il-28 ‘Beagle’, Tu-16 ‘Badger’ and M-4 ‘Bison’. The prop driven Tu-20 ‘Bear’ and its successors including the Tu-22 ‘Backfire’ and finally the Tu-160 ‘Backfire’, were all formidable.

The jet-engined MiG-15 fighter entered service in 1948 and proved itself during the Korean War. The MiG-17, MiG-19 and MiG-21 followed . Ground-attack aircraft included the Su-7 ‘Fitter’ and M-23 ‘Flogger’. The 1970s saw the MiG-25 ‘Foxbat’ interceptor, followed by the MiG-29 ‘Fulcrum’ and Su-27 ‘Flanker’, coming into service.

All these aircraft and many more are authoritatively described and vividly illustrated in this comprehensive work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Release date: Apr 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781399085403

Michael Green

Michael Green (born 1930) was a British theologian, Anglican priest, Christian apologist and author of more than 50 books. He was Principal of St John's College, Nottingham (1969-75) and Rector of St Aldate's Church, Oxford and chaplain of the Oxford Pastorate (1975-86). He had additionally been an honorary canon of Coventry Cathedral from 1970 to 1978. He then moved to Canada where he was Professor of Evangelism at Regent College, Vancouver from 1987 to 1992. He returned to England to take up the position of advisor to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York for the Springboard Decade of Evangelism. In 1993 he was appointed the Six Preacher of Canterbury Cathedral. Despite having officially retired in 1996, he became a Senior Research Fellow and Head of Evangelism and Apologetics at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford in 1997 and lived in the town of Abingdon near Oxford.

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Introduction

The Cold War began shortly after the end of the Second World War and concluded with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The leading contenders, the United States and the Soviet Union, were engaged in an arms race, with each side constantly introducing ever more costly and complex weapon systems. These ranged from tanks to nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Not all met the respective users’ expectations, with some proving to be design dead ends. In this book, the author’s intent is somewhat limited and only addresses the development of Soviet aviation during the Cold War. For those wishing for more information on particular aircraft featured in the book, there are many well-researched references available on a significant number of them.

Chapter One

Fighters

Following the Second World War (the Great Patriotic War to the Soviets), the Soviet Air Force (Russian language abbreviation VVS) retained some of its late wartime-production aircraft for use during the immediate postwar period. In addition, production of those designs continued postwar until a new generation of jet-powered fighters could take their place.

The wartime fighter aircraft that served postwar were the propeller (reciprocating)-driven Lavochkin-7 (La-7) and Yakovlev-9 (Yak-9). Soviet aviation service designations begin with an abbreviation of the last name of the founder/head engineer of the design bureau responsible for the aircraft, and these would continue even after the founder/head engineer had passed away.

A passage from a 1946 American War Department handbook on the Soviet Union’s armed forces presents Soviet fighters’ roles during the Second World War and transition to the immediate postwar era:

The missions of fighter units of the Red Army Air Force are to protect troops and installations from enemy air attack; to destroy enemy aircraft, both in the air and on airfields; to destroy enemy troops; to escort ground attack and bomber aircraft; to conduct aerial reconnaissance; and, as is true with all Soviet aviation, to support the Red Army in all operations.

La-7 Fighter

The La-7 first saw combat with the Red Air Force in September 1944. Armament consisted of either two or three 20mm guns. An air-cooled radial engine gave the fighter a maximum speed of 422mph and a reported service ceiling of 34,280ft.

A Red Air Force pilot had this to say about the La-7: ‘. . . [it] exhibited unquestionable advantages over German aircraft in multiple air combats. In addition to fighter tasks, photo-reconnaissance and bombing were undertaken with success.’

By the time La-7 production concluded, around 5,700 examples had come off the assembly lines, not counting two-seat trainers. Its NATO-assigned reporting name was ‘Fin’.

The wartime La-7 found itself supplemented by the redesigned postwar-built prop-driven La-9 and La-11, respectively assigned the NATO reporting names of ‘Fritz’ and ‘Fang’. The former had a reported service ceiling of 35,400ft and the latter 33,630ft.

The La-9 was the first Lavochkin prop-driven fighter to feature an all-metal fuselage. Previous models were constructed mostly of wood as there was a wartime shortage of metal for aircraft construction. About 1,600 La-9s came off the factory floor between 1946 and 1948 and around 1,200 La-11s between 1947 and 1951.

Yak-9 Fighter

Between late 1942 and 1948, around 17,000 examples of the prop-driven Yak-9 rolled out of the factory doors. Many different aircraft variants appeared, ranging from those configured as fighter/bombers to a reconnaissance version. Its NATO-assigned reporting name was ‘Frank’.

The standard fighter version featured a single 20mm gun and two 12.7mm machine guns. Power came from a liquid-cooled, supercharged V-12 engine. The prototype of the Yak-9U model reached a top speed of 430mph. The aircraft’s reported ceiling was 36,500ft.

Prop-Driven Ilyushin Ground-Attack Aircraft

Another wartime Red Air Force aircraft that saw service during the early postwar years was the prop-driven Ilyushin-2 (Il-2). It first appeared in service in May 1941 and continued to come down the assembly lines until 1945 with about 36,000 completed.

At one point as Il-2 production lagged at a certain factory Stalin sent a threatening letter to those overseeing the aircraft’s production:

You have let down our country and your Red Army. You have the nerve not to manufacture Il-2s until now. Our Red Army now needs Il-2 aircraft like the air it breathes, like the bread it eats. Shenkman produces one Il-2 a day and Tretyakov builds one or two MiG-3s daily. It is a mockery of our country and the Red Army. I ask you not to try the government’s patience, and demand that you manufacture more Il-2s. This is my final warning.

An improved version of the Il-2 designated the Il-10 entered into service in October 1944. Production of the Il-10 continued until 1949 with 4,600 completed. Between the Il-2 and Il-10 around 42,000 examples came off the factory floor.

Between 1951 and 1956 Czech industry constructed a total of 1,200 examples of the Il-10 under licence. They assigned their copy of the Il-10 the designation B-33.

NATO Reporting Names

NATO reporting names for Soviet aircraft originated from its Air Standardization Coordinating Committee (ASCC). They were intended to sound different from one another to avoid confusion over the radio.

The first letter of a NATO reporting name identifies the type of aircraft: ‘B’ = bomber, ‘C’ = cargo, ‘F’ = fighter and ‘H’ = helicopter. Variations of the basic model of an aircraft or helicopter are indicated by a letter suffix. Singlesyllable names indicate prop-driven aircraft and multiple-syllable names describe jet-engine-powered aircraft.

Between 1953 and 1954 Soviet industry built an additional 146 examples of a modified and up-gunned model of the Il-10 they designated the Il-10M. All the Ilyushin prop-driven ground-attack aircraft were pulled from service by 1956.

Neither the Il-2 nor Il-10 received an official nickname. Both fell under the heading of Shturmoviks, the Russian word for ground-attack aircraft. Their pilots nicknamed them the ‘Ilyushas’. Befitting their role, the Il-2 and Il-10 were relatively thickly armoured and came with various guns, rockets and bombs.

In the book titled Red Phoenix Rising: The Soviet Air Force in World War II by Von Hardesty and Ilya Grinberg comes the following passage on the early battlefield shortcomings of the Il-2 in 1942 based on a wartime report:

Too often, the Il-2 units operated in small groups, which limited the potential striking power of ground-attack aviation. These small clusters of attacking Il-2s were easy to thwart with fighters and anti-aircraft fire. There was a tendency, in the face of spirited resistance, for the Il-2s to disperse and act individually, which often increased their vulnerability to German fighters. Pilots opted to attack less valuable targets such as trucks rather than tanks. Flight briefings were often unfocused, and there was a general absence of proper coordination.

Despite their ground-attack role, the two-man Il-2s and Il-10s had on occasion served as fighters going after enemy transports, reconnaissance planes and bombers.

With their postwar use by the Soviet Union and some Warsaw Pact countries, NATO assigned ‘Bark’ to the Il-2 and ‘Beast’ to the Il-10.

American Lend-Lease Fighters

In addition to its own designed and built fighters, the Soviet Air Force also retained for a few years after the Second World War the American Lend-Lease-supplied P-39 named the Airacobra and a much-improved derivative, the P-63, named the Kingcobra. The Soviet Air Force received 4,700 P-39s and 2,397 P-63s under Lend-Lease. NATO assigned the reporting name ‘Fred’ to the P-39 and ‘Freehand’ to the P-63.

Found within a book titled Red Star Airacobra: Memoirs of a Soviet Fighter Ace is the following extract on the author’s memory of the toughness of the P-39 Airacobra:

One of the fighter planes of a neighbouring squadron looked pathetic. It was stitched through, from nose to tail, by a German gun-burst, and light shone through it in places. The flyer himself had already gone around the plane several times inspecting the shell holes. He was visibly still going through the upheavals of that dogfight. I was surprised by the durability of the Airacobra since, despite all that damage, the plane had not caught fire and had not crashed. The pilot had managed to fly it back to the airstrip, land it, and taxi to the parking bay.

A Jet-Powered Lavochkin Fighter

Lavochkin’s first and last jet (reactionary)-powered fighter/interceptor proved to be the twin-engine turbojet La-15, which entered service in 1949. Its NATO reporting name was ‘Fantail’. The Lavochkin design bureau lasted only until the death of its founder in June 1960.

The La-15 was optimized to destroy enemy bombers. A total of 235 examples left the factories, with withdrawal from Soviet Air Force service beginning in 1954. German wartime air combat research, obtained after the war, convinced postwar Soviet aircraft designers that a fighter/interceptor must have more than one gun larger than 20mm to take down large four-engine prop-driven bombers. So it was armed with three 23mm guns. Its service ceiling was 44,300ft and its maximum speed was 638mph.

Rather than the straight wings of its prop-driven predecessors, the La-15 had swept-back wings, an idea conceived by German designers in the 1930s to reduce drag on high-speed aircraft. It had never appeared on German production wartime jet aircraft.

At the end of the Second World War, the United States and Soviet militaries acquired German wartime research on jet aircraft with swept-back wings. That information went to their respective aviation industries.

Soviet Military Aviation Organizations and Missions

The Soviet Air Forces (Russian language abbreviation VVS) consisted of various Soviet military organizations with aerial assets, the largest for the twenty-five years following the Second World War, the Anti-Air Defence of the Nation (Russian language abbreviation POV). Its purpose was to protect Soviet air space from enemy strategic bombers armed with nuclear weapons in case of a Third World War, and in peacetime to prevent overflights by foreign reconnaissance planes.

As the threat from NATO manned bombers and other aircraft diminished by the early 1970s, the number of aircraft in the POV decreased. At the same time, the number of aircraft assigned to Frontal Aviation (Russian language abbreviation FA) grew, eventually eclipsing that of the POV.

A declassified USAF report of 1979 noted that Frontal Aviation

. . . consists of those air forces that have been assigned the mission of supporting the combat operations of the ground forces. This support consists of providing protection against enemy air attacks, destroying enemy forces on the battlefield and in rear areas, conducting air reconnaissance of the battlefield and enemy rear areas, supporting air landings and assault operations while disrupting enemy airborne operations, and disrupting enemy communications through the use of electronic warfare.

Other Soviet Air Forces assets included Long-Range Aviation (Russian DA) and Military Transport Aviation (Russian VTA).

German Influence

In the book titled The Soviet Air Force by Asher Lee first published in 1950, the author notes the impact of German wartime technology on the Soviet aircraft industry:

It would be difficult to exaggerate the Soviet debt to the Luftwaffe [German Air Force] in the 1945–47 period. First, [Joseph] Stalin’s air technicians inherited hundreds of German rocket fighter Messerschmitt 163s, single-jet Heinkel 162s, and twin-jet Messerschmitt 262s, which were stacked up on factory airfields . . . In addition, thousands of technicians and engineers from Luftwaffe ground units . . . were captured . . . Then there were the high-class jet-engine technicians who were captured in Germany and resettled in Soviet aircraft factories.

The head of the Soviet aviation industry proposed that they merely copy the German Me 262 fighter-bomber design. It seemed the quickest way to catch up with the United States and Great Britain in jet aircraft technology. However, at least one Soviet designer spoke against this approach, according to the book titled The Soviet Air Force Since 1918 authored by Alexander Boyd and published in 1977. In it are the following points:

. . . [the] German fighter was too complex a design to be confidently undertaken by the Soviet aircraft industry and that its demands in piloting and field maintenance would be excessive. He was also apprehensive about the effects such plagiarism might have on the morale of Soviet designers just starting to grapple with the basics of jet aircraft design.

Despite that opinion, the Sukhoi design bureau presented aircraft designs similar to the German Me 262 fighter/bomber. However, Joseph Stalin (the leader of the Soviet Union between 1924 and 1953) rejected that path, preferring that the Soviet aviation industry should design the next generation of jet aircraft.

British Influence

The wartime German turbojet engine’s poor durability and limited thrust with an axial compressor proved a problem. Power for the La-15 therefore came from a reverse-engineered copy of the British-designed Rolls-Royce Nene, a turbojet engine with a centrifugal compressor.

Soviet industry could reverse-engineer the Rolls-Royce Nene engine because the British government had sold the Soviet Union twenty-five examples in 1947, with the disclaimer that they should not be used for military purposes. Stalin could not believe that the British government approved the sale. The original Soviet version of the Nene engine became the RD-45, followed by an improved model, the RD-45F.

The Soviet government also received thirty examples of Roll-Royce’s Derwent centrifugal compressor turbojet engine at the same time. The Soviet reverse-engineered example became the RD-500, which only appeared on the Yak-23.

Jet-Powered Yakovlev Fighters

Beginning in 1946, the turbojet-powered Yak-15 entered production. A total of 280 examples rolled out of the factory doors between 1946 and 1947. The first jet-powered aircraft built by Soviet industry, the prototype flew on 24 April 1946. Its NATO-assigned reporting name was ‘Feather’.

To accelerate the development of the straight-wing Yak-15, its designers began with the Yak-3, a wartime prop-driven Soviet fighter. Removing its existing engine, they adapted the plane’s forward underside fuselage to mount a modified copy of a reverse-engineered British-designed engine.

An early fault that plagued the Yak-15 was jet engine exhaust heat damaging the plane’s rear fuselage. The aircraft’s rubber-rimmed tail wheel also melted. The solution was a thicker, longer rear fuselage and an all-steel tail wheel. A later variant had a tricycle undercarriage that did away with the tail wheel.

The Yak-15 saw use only as a trainer, as did an improved model labelled the Yak-17. The latter also had the NATO reporting name ‘Feather’. Some 400 examples of the Yak-17 came off the factory floor by 1948. In a declassified CIA report dated 28 October 1949 is an interesting passage:

Six of these planes [Yak-15s] were stationed at the Polish airfield of Torun for a two-to three-week period. As reported by the Soviet pilots, the Soviet jets were crashing very frequently prior to September 1948. Since September 1948, the accident rate has steadily decreased, possibly as a result of the use of more German specialists in the training exercises.

More Yakovlev Jet Fighters

Following the Yak-17 was the jet-engine-powered Yak-23 which saw service with the Soviet Air Forces and some Warsaw Pact nations. Its NATO reporting name was ‘Flora’. Proving inferior in performance to the MiG-15, it never entered large-scale production. Only 300 of these straight-wing fighters came out of the factory between 1949 and 1951.

According to Oleg Sapunkov’s historical research, in service the Yak-23 was regarded as an easy fighter to fly, with pilots praising its stability and short take-off run. It did, however, suffer from noticeable vibrations as it approached Mach 1 due to its straight wings, and its lack of a pressurized cockpit limited the practical altitude at which it could engage enemy aircraft.

A more successful Yakovlev design was the two-seater Yak-25, assigned the NATO reporting name of ‘Flashlight’. Its prototype first flew in 1952. Series production of the swept-wing aircraft began in 1953 and continued until 1958, with 480 examples completed.

The Yak-25 was the Soviet Air Forces’ first radar-equipped all-weather fighter/ interceptor. Its two engines propelled it to a top speed of 677mph, with a service ceiling of about 46,000ft. Armament consisted of two 37mm guns.

Oleg Sapunkov’s research indicated that the Yak-25 was well-liked by both pilots and ground crew: it was easy to fly, the duplicated controls allowed the two pilots to take turns controlling the aircraft on long-distance patrols, and the spacious cockpit was comfortable. As the Yak-25 was built with maintenance in mind, all major systems were easily accessed. The only criticism was that the low-set engines could take in dust and rocks during take-off, which led to some reliability problems.

Found within an article in the 1 May 1958 issue of Air Force Magazine is the following passage on the Yak-25:

One thing the Russians are counting on in the event of an all-out war with the United States is that they will be able to defend their homeland from aerial invasion by the US Strategic Air Command. One important set of tools they have in their defense system is the Yak-25 – models A, B and C.

The rather good range and speed of these all-weather interceptors and support craft is in keeping with the fact that Russia has few airports (compared with the West) from which aircraft of this type can operate, which means they must be capable of striking an invading bomber force from a considerable distance. Also, Russia must protect a vast border area, which stretches air defenses – and so interceptors must have more range.

For example, because most targets in Russia are rather more inland than those in the United States, invading bombers would have a longer period over Soviet territory. This would give the Yak-25A and [Yak] C a greater period of time in which to find and hit SAC’s bombers.

Yak-28 Firebar

The replacement for the Yak-25 in the fighter/interceptor role was the two-man Yak-28. NATO assigned it the reporting name ‘Firebar’. It first flew in prototype form in 1958. Instead of having two 37mm guns like the Yak-25, its only armament was four air-to-air missiles (AAMs) carried on underwing pylons (hardpoints).

Powered by twin turbojet engines, the Yak-28 had a top speed of 1,174mph and a service ceiling of around 52,500ft. Production began in 1962 and continued until 1967, with 437 examples built. The Yak-28 served until the early 1980s. It also served the Soviet Air Forces in various other roles, including as a bomber and a reconnaissance variant (each of which had its own NATO reporting name).

Aircraft Speeds

Mach 1 translates to 761mph (breaking the sound barrier), and Mach 2 is 1,290mph. Aircraft flying faster than Mach 1 are ‘supersonic’, whereas those flying slower