SOVIET ACES OF WORLD WAR 2 (Osprey Aircraft of the Aces No 15)

Hugh Morgan, 1997

Although initially equipped with very poor aircraft, and robbed of effective leadership thanks as much to Stalin's purges in the late 1930s as to the efforts of the Luftwaffe, Soviet fighter pilots soon turned the tables through the use of both lend-llease aircraft like the Hurricane, Spitfire, P-39 and P-40, and home-grown machines like the MiG-3, La GG-3/5, Lavochkin La-5/7/9 and the Yak-1/3. Indeed, the later Yaks and Lavochkins were easily superior to the bf 109 and Fw 190 at low-level--the favored 'killing field' of pilots like Ivan Khozedub and Alexander Pokryshkin, both of whom finished with higher scored than the leading pilots in the West. 96 pages