Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The Battle of Moscow was a military campaign that consisted of two periods of strategically significant fighting on a 600 km (370 mi) sector of the Eastern Front during World War II, between October 1941 and January 1942. The Soviet defensive effort frustrated Hitler's attack on Moscow, the capital and largest city of the Soviet Union.
The Luftwaffe was called upon to rescue the situation in a huge aerial counter-offensive lasting from 16 July–31 July against a Soviet offensive at Khotynets and saved two German armies from encirclement, reducing the attacking Soviet 11th Guards Army to just 33 tanks by 20 July.
Axis and Soviet air operations during Operation Barbarossa took place over a six-month period, 22 June – December, 1941. Aviation played a critical role in the fighting on the Eastern Front during this period, in the battles to gain and maintain air superiority or air supremacy, to offer close air support to armies on battlefield, interdicting enemy supply lines, while supplying friendly forces.
In early 1941, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, despite receiving intelligence about an imminent attack, did not order a mobilization of the Red Army, fearing that it might provoke Germany. As a result, Soviet forces were largely caught unprepared when the invasion began, with many units positioned poorly and understrength.
21 April: A bombing raid on Norway kills the first American military officer killed in World War II. 13 May: Luftflotte 3 (supported by Luftflotte 2) in the Battle of France executed the heaviest air bombardment to date (300 sorties)--the most intense by World War II Luftwaffe.
Among the experienced Soviet pilots who fought during Spanish Civil War against the Luftwaffe, against Empire of Japan in 1939, and Finland in 1939/1940, many understood that war could not be avoided and expected a German attack. What was unexpected for all of them was the nature of the air war that the Luftwaffe imposed on Soviets from the ...
Operation Uranus (Russian: Опера́ция «Ура́н», romanized: Operatsiya "Uran") was a Soviet 19–23 November 1942 strategic operation on the Eastern Front of World War II which led to the encirclement of Axis forces in the vicinity of Stalingrad: the German Sixth Army, the Third and Fourth Romanian armies, and portions of the German Fourth Panzer Army.
During World War II, German pilots claimed roughly 70,000 aerial victories, while over 75,000 Luftwaffe aircraft were destroyed or significantly damaged. Of these, nearly 40,000 were lost entirely. The Luftwaffe had only two commanders-in-chief throughout its history: Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring and later Generalfeldmarschall Robert Ritter ...