by Viktor SVISHCHEV, Dr. Se. (Milit. Sc.), retired Major-General, veteran of the Great Patriotic War

The 65th anniversary of the victory of our people and its Armed Forces in the Great Patriotic War of 1941 - 1945 is the main event of this year. Every time, when we mark this sacred date, we pay tribute to the memory of and express gratitude to those who were killed in action and to veterans who defended the independence of our Motherland. We address words of gratitude also to scientists and engineers, workers and employees, who created, in incredibly severe conditions and in a very short period of time, a powerful military-technical potential of the army and navy, one of the most important components in the defeat of the Nazi Germany.

The military-technical potential is a quantity of combat equipment in troops participating in full-scale battles, capabilities of the industry to pro-duce arms in the required volume, the ability of scien-tists and designers to update them and develop new models, the availability of food and material resources. The military experience of the 20th century has proved that victory goes to the army possessing a more powerful military-technical potential and more modern military equipment and weapons, first of all, tanks and aircraft. This was proved by successful operations of the fascist Wehrmacht at the initial period of World War II, in particular, in armed conflicts with the armies of Poland, France, Great Britain, Belgium, Holland and Yugosla-via. Due to this factor in combination with a surprise attack, German troops delivered a heavy blow to the Red Army in the summer of 1941. For example, during seven days of the border battles, the Western Front was completely defeated, and its commanders shot by Soviet punitive forces. The troops of the South-Western Front and partially of the North-Western Front were also utterly defeated.

Today, to explain the events, which put the country on the brink of a military catastrophe, a number of histori-

cal and fiction works try to prove that allegedly at that time the USSR lacked tanks and aircraft, which made up the main striking force. This enabled the fascist Germany and its satellites, namely, Romania, Hungary and Finland, to easily achieve military success. Is that true?

Viktor Anfilov, Dr. Sc. (History) is among the most active authors of similar assertions. In his book The Un-forgettable Year of 1941 (M.: Voyenizdat Publishers, 1982) he wrote: "We had many tanks and aircraft of obsolete design with a very limited life of engines. They were greatly inferior to German combat vehicles by tactical and technical characteristics, and therefore cannot be taken into consideration." In line with this assertion and taking into account only our new types of tanks (1,475 units) and aircraft (1,340 units), the new and old mod-els of tanks and aircraft of Germany and its satellites made up 4,283 and 4,980 respectively. Anfilov states: "The enemy outnumbered our troops twofold in soldiers and threefold in tanks and aircraft." However, he says nothing about the fact that in the summer of 1941 the Red Army had over 11,000 tanks and almost 8,500 air-craft of old design in the borderline areas. All of them were based in five western military districts and partici-pated quite successfully in the initial military opera-tions.

It is obvious that we cannot accept such assertions in order to properly fix the correlation of opposing forces, as his calculation is incorrect. It is a downright fabrica-tion used to conceal the real causes of the catastrophe. By the way, such erroneous data are included in the brief History of the Great Patriotic War (M.: Voyenizdat, 1984) and the encyclopedia Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 (M.: Voyenizdat, 1985). Later on, even such a well-known military leader as Marshal of the Soviet Union Vasily Chuikov, when speaking of losses of our aviation and basing on the data of the said works, stated that "by massive strikes at our airfields, the fascist aviation put out of action 1,200 Soviet combat aircraft on the first day of the war. The numerical superiority of the enemy in the air grew considerably".

What can we say about this statement? Indeed, by sud-den bombings of 66 airfields during on June 22, 1941, the enemy destroyed approximately 800 planes on the ground and 400 in the air. If we take into account only new types of aircraft, as Anfilov and Chuikov do, only 340 planes remained in our western military districts and 4,780 (200 lost) at the disposal of the enemy. In other words, we get multiple superiority, almost 14 times, of the enemy.

But what was the real situation? It should be stressed that in the first two days of the war, 1,200 planes of the Air Force of the Leningrad Military District and 2,043 aircraft of the Baltic and Northern Navy neither took part in combat operations nor were attacked by the enemy. There remained 6,675 aircraft at four acting fronts and 1,317 (22 lost) in the aviation of the Chief Command. Thus, even after the losses on the first day of the war, the USSR surpassed the enemy in aircraft 2.4 times and was by no means inferior 14 times. The same is true of tanks. When Hitler learnt about it in the course of combat actions, he said: "If I knew about it earlier, I would have never begun war against the Soviet Union."

Red Army tanks: a-heavy KV; b-T-34-85; c-heavy IS-2,

Soviet artillery of the Great Patriotic War: a-BM-31-12 rocket launchers; b-100 mm SU-100 medium self-propelled launcher; c-152 mm heavy self-propelled launcher ISU-152.

Thus, Germany with its allies did not outnumber the USSR in tanks and aircraft at the beginning of the war, on the contrary, we had 2.9 times more tanks and 2 times more aircraft. Besides, our combat vehicles were of bet-ter quality.

Nevertheless, due to preponderance of troops and the number of medium tanks, the enemy got a chance to launch an offensive all over the front and to maneuver to encircle Soviet troops, outflanking them. To prevent such an advantage, it would be sufficient at least several days before the enemy attack to declare mobilization in the country. Unfortunately, this did not happen. Moreover, the well-known "Statement of the Infor-mation Agency of the USSR of June 14, 1941" saying that there would be no war, only disorganized the com-mand of the Red Army and, first of all, of the western military districts. As a result, the fascist Germany man-aged to occupy a part of the USSR territory in a short

Soviet aircraft: a-Yak-9 fighter plane; b-LA-5FN fighter; c-ll-2 attack plane.

period of time and to set up a terroristic regime in the invaded lands.

No doubt, in the pre-war period the troops were not provided in full measure with weapons and combat equipment of a new generation, although our scientists and designers, engineers and workers worked indefatiga-bly. By early 1940, the designer Mikhail Koshkin com-pleted preparation work for production of the best in the world medium tank T-34. Under the supervision of another designer of armored equipment Zhores Kotin, there was created the heavy tank KV-1, against which the enemy had actually no combat equipment. As General of the Army Konstantin Galitsky writes in his memoirs, 10 German tanks fell on one shot down KV-1 in subsequent battles.

In the same year of 1940, the national industry pro-duced 646 new tanks and during six months of 1941-1,100 tanks more. According to these indicators we also surpassed the enemy, which, apart from its tanks T-II, T-III and T-IV, continued to use also old tanks of the Czech Skoda, French Schneider-Creusot and Renault works, and even Polish tankettes of the British Carden-Loyd works, captured earlier by the fascist Germany. In other words, the whole industrially developed Europe worked to the benefit of Hitler.

As for the Soviet tanks of the old design, Marshal of the Soviet Union Konstantin Rokossovsky noted in his memoirs The Soldier's Duty, that they were fit for combat actions. This was proved by many full-scale battles, for example, in the environs of Lutsk, Rovno and Dubno. Due to their high speed, our tanks BT-7 and BT-7M cut through and put to flight the enemy infantry. Besides, they surpassed light German tanks in the armament capacity, fuel endurance, maximum speed of movement and were inferior to them only in front armor thickness.

On the eve of the war, the USSR surpassed the fascist Germany and its allies also in quantity and quality para-meters of air warfare means.

It is well-known that at that time the enemy deployed practically the whole of its aviation near our border and the Air Forces of Romania and Finland. On the alert were 4,932 planes, including 3,951 new and 541 old ones. This armada was supplemented by 440 German reconnaissance aircraft. Germany had no new type air-craft, and it was a great advantage of the USSR.

Our western border districts had 32 aviation divisions, including 18 as a part of army aviation and 14 as a part of frontline aviation. The latter had also 7 reconnais-sance regiments. In total and taking into consideration forces of the long-range bombing aviation and means of the Navy, there were 9,917 combat aircraft, including 6,193 new models, namely, Yak-1, Mig-3, LaGG-3, 1-16 (fighters), 11-2 (low-flying attack aircraft), Su-2, Pe-2, Yak-4, Ar-2, SB (bombers), DB-3F, Pe-8 (long-range bombers). This list included 2,279 obsolete air-craft of different types. In other words, the numerical

ratio of aviation forces of the USSR and fascist Germany with its satellites made up 2:1 in our favor. Such superiority over the enemy enabled Soviet aviation to dominate in the air and to influence the course of combat actions. However, due to a number of objective and subjective causes this did not happen. These causes are disclosed in many historical works and fiction, memoirs of military leaders and recollections of partici-pants of the past battles.

It should also be noted that after the outbreak of the war, the USSR's military-technical potential began decreasing in the conditions of rapid advance of the German troops deep into our territory. To restore this potential, it was necessary to move many industrial enterprises, first of all, defense ones, from the western regions of the country to the eastern regions. Our peo-ple completed this colossal work in the shortest period of time. During July-November 1941, a total of 1,523 enterprises, including 1,360 large, mainly defense, enterprises, were evacuated to the Volga region, Ural, Siberia, Kazakhstan and Central Asia.

In the new production areas, the tank industry launched mass production of armored vehicles of high fighting characteristics: T-34, K.V-1, T-50, T-60 and others. In the second half of 1941, their output increased 2.5 times as compared with the first half of the year and amounted to 4,740 units.

In the autumn of 1941, the production of T-34 medi-um tanks started at the Stalingrad Tractor Works, Krasnoye Sormovo enterprise, in Ural (carriage-building works and heavy mechanical engineering works). Engaged actively in this work were also the Gorky Automobile Plant and a big tank-construction enter-prise from Kolomensk evacuated to the city of Kirov. Production was launched at full capacity also at the Chelyabinsk Tractor Works, which housed the Kirov Tank (Leningrad) and Kharkov Diesel Works, due to which there appeared the largest industrial association for production of heavy armored vehicles KV-1, IS-3 and T-34-85. As a result, by the end of 1942, the Red Army received 24,400 light, medium and heavy tanks and also self-propelled artillery units SU-76, SU-100, SU-122, SU-158 and ISU-152.

The increase in the production of armored units con-tinued also in 1942-1944. In total, from the beginning of the war and in the first half of 1945, the national indus-try produced 102,800 tanks and self-propelled artillery units, exceeding more than twice the similar production figures of the German industry for the same period.

Aviation, another component of the military-techni-cal potential, developed and strengthened after the out-break of the war in a similar way. Many machine-build-ing plants were passed over to the aviation industry. In the east they quickly started production of new types of low-flying attack aircraft, bombers and fighters. The

Naval ships: a-cruiser KIROV; b-battleship OKTYABRSKAYA REVOLUTSIA (OCTOBER REVOLUTION); c-K-type submarine.

Air Forces of the country received altogether 112,100 aircraft in the war years, mainly thanks to the work of People's Commissar of Aviation Industry Alexei Sha-khurin, scientists and designers Sergei Ilyushin, Semyon Lavochkin, Artyom Mikoyan, Nikolai Poli-karpov, Andrei Tupolev, Alexander Yakovlev, and many others.

Our allies in the struggle with the fascist Germany made a certain contribution to strengthening of the USSR military and technical potential. Under the lend-lease program (for payment) we received via Iran and Murmansk such foreign tanks and self-propelled artillery vehicles as M3 Stuart, M3 General Lee and General Grant, and also self-propelled units T-48 (we called them SU-57) and M10 Velverayn (USA), MKVII Tetrarch, MKII Matilda, M4A2 Sherman, Churchill (Great Britain). A total of 7,500 tanks and self-propelled artillery vehicles were brought under the lend-lease to the Soviet Union.

As regards aviation, especially many aircraft were delivered from the USA, and all of them were of high quality, including the famous fighter P-39 Aircobra, piloted by the thrice Hero of the Soviet Union Alexander Pokryshkin. In the wartime he shot down 59 enemy air-craft, 48 on the Aircobra.

Other American fighters, such as P-63 Aircobra, P-47 Thunderbolt, P-40 Kitty Hawk and Tomahawk, were pur-chased in a smaller number. American bombers A-20 Boston, B-25 Mitchell and torpedo bombers were also widely used in our country. Besides, Hurricane fighters were delivered to the USSR from Great Britain.

We acquired under the lend-lease program a total of 16,816 aircraft, which made up only 6-7 percent of the number of aircraft produced by national industry.

Thus, our people played a leading role in the creation of a powerful military-technical potential of the country and its Armed Forces. They did their utmost to satisfy completely the requirements of the army and Navy in new tanks and aircraft, artillery weapons and small arms, as well as ammunitions.

Thanks to the incredible efforts of our people, the pro-duction level of all types of combat equipment in the USSR increased steadily and already in November 1942 it surpassed the similar indicator of Germany and its allies. This enabled our army, in combination with the accumulated experience in management of operations, to strike consistently a powerful blow to the enemy near Moscow at the end of 1941, then to accomplish success-fully the winter and summer campaigns of 1942-1943, including the well-known Stalingrad and Kursk battles, to lift the blockade of Leningrad, and in 1944-1945 to carry out such major strategic operations as the Battle of Korsun-Shevchenkovsky and Bagration, and to end the war by capturing the German capital and hoisting the Banner of Victory over the Reichstag.