Barbarossa & the Retreat to Moscow: Recollections of Soviet Fighter Pilots on the Eastern Front

Red Army Air Force pilots share their stories of WWII combat and life on the front lines in this collection of interviews with Russian war veterans.

The onset of war in the summer of 1941 was a disaster for the Soviet Air Force. In a matter of weeks, most of the Soviet frontline aircraft were destroyed by the Luftwaffe onslaught, and the casualty rate among the pilots was cripplingly high. Yet the surviving few learned a great deal from their harrowing battle experience. In time, they forme...