Рыбин, Ю. В. Советские асы на Харрикейнах в годы Второй Мировой Войны / Юрий Рыбин . – [Б. м. ] : Osprey Publishing, 2012. – 97 с. : ил., портр. – Англ. яз.

C HA PTER ONE HURRICANES IN SOVIET SERVICE M any books and articles have been written about the pilots who fought in the legendary Hawker Hurricane. Inevitably much of this attention has been devoted to those who distinguished themselves in the skies over Britain in 1940, and it was hardly surprising that the annual Battle of Britain flypasts over London in the immediate post-war years were led by a Hurricane. Similarly, many words have been written about the Allied pilots who fought against Axis forces in other theatres during World War 2 while flying Hurricanes. But little research has been conducted into the exploits of the many Soviet pilots who flew the legendary fighter. What has appeared in print in the past has been fragmentary in nature and often, to put it mildly, full o f inaccuracies. Yet in 1942 the Hurricane was the most numerous Western Allied fighter in the inventory of the Soviet Union’s Red Army and Naval Air Force units serving on the enormous Soviet-German front. A major expansion of Red Army Air Force fighter regiments had been made possible by the monthly shipments of equipment from the Allies under lend-lease, which had been arriving since December 1941. In the winter of 1941-42 these shipments were needed more than ever. The halting of the German advance on Moscow in January 1942 encouraged the Soviet command to build on this achievement with a series o f offensive operations along the western, northwestern and Kalinin fronts. Many of the fighter regiments equipped with the Hurricane were the first to be mobilised along these fronts. Specifically, the units involved were 1st Guards and 157th, 191st, 195th, 488th and 736th Fighter Air Regiments (Istrebitelniy Aviapolks, IAPs). The latter two units were air defence regiments subordinated to Moscow’s 6th Air Defence Fighter Corps (Istrebitelniy Aviakorpus, IAK), which also boasted three more air regiments — 67th, 428th and 438th IAPs —that were equipped with Hurricanes. During this period these regiments were typically comprised o f two squadrons, each o f which was equipped with 20-22 aircraft. The latter figure also included training and liaison aircraft. This, however, was just the start of the re-equipment of Soviet 6 fighter regiments with aircraft Soviet Hurricane units typically operated from primitive unpaved airfields as seen here. This machine has RS-82 rocket rails fitted beneath its wings. The RS-82 was used by most Soviet fighter types during the first year of the w ar in the east © Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com