The book tells the story of the air battles over Hungary that took place from October 1944 to March 1945 between the Red Army Air Force and the Luftwaffe, in which the Air Forces of Hungary and Romania also played a part.
Petlyakov's Pe-2 was the most numerous Soviet twin-engined bomber of World War 2, the aircraft being used as a dive-bomber, ground attack platform and dedicated reconnaissance type. The first examples entered service in August 1940, and by the time production came to end in late 1945, no fewer than 10,547 examples had been built.
Soviet fighter aviation suffered terribly at the hands of the Jagdwaffe in the first year of the war in the east, and with the arrival of JG 51 and its Fw 190s on the Stalingrad Front in September 1942 things only got worse for the hard-pressed Red Army Air Force pilots. However, help was on its way in the form of the re-engined LaGG-3 fighter, which was fitted with a powerful air-cooled M-82 radial engine. Designated the La-5, the new fighter was capable of withstanding more punishment than the fragile LaGG-3, and it was also appreciably faster and had a greater rate of climb. It was more of a handful to fly, however, but the new generation of better trained pilots who were led into combat by the survivors of 1941-42 quickly found the La-5 (and, later, the improved La-7) very much to their liking. Arriving in the frontline in August 1942, the new Lavochkin fighters soon found themselves pitted into action on the Central Sector against the equally new Fw 190As of JG 51. The first clashes took place in November of that year, and from then on the Focke-Wulf fighter would regularly clash with its counterpart from Lavochkin.
Featuring first-hand accounts from veteran pilots, rare archival photographs and expert analysis, this volume brings to life the vicious dogfights that took place between the Bf 109 and the Yak as they vied for mastery of the frozen skies of the Eastern Front.
This book brings together the best and most iconic fighters of World War II, pitted against one another in desperate aerial combat. The battle for the skies in World War II fuelled a race between rival air forces to develop ever faster and more capable fighter aircraft – and the struggle for air superiority was never over until the war itself ended. This volume explores four clashes of some of the finest planes and pilots, in key theatres of the war: Spitfires duelling the formidable Bf 109 over the Channel, the Fw 190 battling the Soviet La 5 and 7 on the Eastern Front, the F4F Wildcat in a desperate clash with the legendary A6M Zero-sen, and the F4U Corsair in combat with the second-generation Japanese Ki-84 in the closing days of the war. Fully illustrated with contemporary photographs, maps and colour artwork, Air Combat conveys the full story behind these dramatic aviation duels.