Finnish air victories (LeR 3) on 1944

[Juha]

There is only one incident where the witness said the pilot scored more planes thet he actually claimed. That was July 2nd 5 or 6 kills by Lieutenant Kyösti " Kössi " Karhila.

Witness on the ground said Kössi shot 6 IL-2s and Kössi himself claimed just 5.

Official records from Russia don't object the possibilty that Kössi actually shot 6.

Kössi was officially credited with...zero kills.

How you can be sure that the witness saw Kössi's fight and not e.g. that of Paavo Myllylä. After all Myllylä claimed one destroyed and three damaged Il-2s in his combat report when Kössi claimed only 3 damaged in his. FiAF accepted 10 Il-2s destroyed and 9 damaged (incl. Kössi's and Myllylä's) during the evening of 2 July by fighters and LW one Il-2 as destr.. During the whole day AA claimed 13 Il-2s.

[Juha Tompuri]

Hi,

Please continue the discussion about the alleged Karhila success at the thread of it's own:
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 9#p1973689

Regards, Juha

[Art]

If I have understood correctly, if a damaged plane crash landed on some Soviet air field and was a total write off, the Soviets didn't count the plane lost in combat.

In examples I've seen planes written off after crash landing with combat damage were recorded as combat loss. There were even curious cases: IL-2 No.1871612 from the 448 Ground-Attack Regiment was damaged in combat with German fighters on 12.01.1943 and made and emergency landing near the front-line. After that the plane was destroyed by German mortar fire. Was recorded as a "loss to fighters"

[Topspeed]

There is only one incident where the witness said the pilot scored more planes thet he actually claimed. That was July 2nd 5 or 6 kills by Lieutenant Kyösti " Kössi " Karhila.

Witness on the ground said Kössi shot 6 IL-2s and Kössi himself claimed just 5.

Official records from Russia don't object the possibilty that Kössi actually shot 6.

Kössi was officially credited with...zero kills.

How you can be sure that the witness saw Kössi's fight and not e.g. that of Paavo Myllylä. After all Myllylä claimed one destroyed and three damaged Il-2s in his combat report when Kössi claimed only 3 damaged in his. FiAF accepted 10 Il-2s destroyed and 9 damaged (incl. Kössi's and Myllylä's) during the evening of 2 July by fighters and LW one Il-2 as destr.. During the whole day AA claimed 13 Il-2s.

Because Kössi in his memoirs tells to have shot 5 on one occasion.

I have no idea how his kills turned from 3 to 5 in his book ?

Where did the Paavo Myllyläs action take place ?

[Juha Tompuri]

Topspeed,

Hi,

Please continue the discussion about the alleged Karhila success at the thread of it's own:
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 9#p1973689

Regards, Juha

[Juha Tompuri]

If I have understood correctly, if a damaged plane crash landed on some Soviet air field and was a total write off, the Soviets didn't count the plane lost in combat.

In examples I've seen planes written off after crash landing with combat damage were recorded as combat loss.

Thanks, but how about the mentioned after combat crashes at own air fields?

Regards, Juha

[Art]

What I can find in the records of 281 ShAD:
IL-2 from the 872 ShAP, 22.07.43 damaged by flaks when attacking a target, crash-landed at Kolosar' airfield, written-off, recorded as a loss to ground weapons. Doesn't seem to be the most usual case: most destroyed planes crash-landed outside airfields, on the other hand most damaged planes that managed to return to airfields were repairable. On the other hand there were cases when an airplane received a battle damage and was additionally damaged at landing and was recorded as a noncombat loss (repairable). One should look into each individual case apparently.

[Juha Tompuri]

Thanks,

Regards, Juha

[Karelia]

Well, as far as the year 1944 is concerned, that is not correct. Reports of strength and losses in the Leningrad Front were kept regularly (every day if we talk about personnel losses) and in good order. Generally speaking staff discipline and overall level of staff work creates an impression of considerable improvement compared with say 1941. As for verification of aircraft losses that can be easily done by balance method: the number of airplanes on 1 July must be equal to the respective number on 1 June plus the number of new planes received minus all departures including losses.

As you should have noticed, I wrote "especially during the Winter War/early Continuation War". Those were the periods, when the soviet troops did not get the results they should have got. In 1944 the war was already going much better for the SU and despite of the losses the results were in general achieved. Thus there was no more that great need for falsification.

No doubt in the Air Force the falsification (of own losses) in general was more difficult. However there were ways how to diminish the losses caused by the enemy and instead mark them as write offs for other causes.

[Juha]

...No doubt in the Air Force the falsification (of own losses) in general was more difficult. However there were ways how to diminish the losses caused by the enemy and instead mark them as write offs for other causes.

That was not so easy in VVS, too many losses because of technical problems, that meant sabotage and grave problems to the CO and technical personel, too many losses because of pilot errors or weather related, bad problems to the CO because of he had sent pilots to missions too difficult to them etc.

But it is known that LW sometimes falsified combat losses to tecnical failures. The first Bf 110 recovered from Kuola area or near Kantalahti, I cannot remeber the exact location, had hits in one engine but when the LW docus were checked, it was marked as lost because of engine malfunction. It happened the the pilot of the plane was still alive and when asked on the case he admitted that he had given the wrong reason in his combat report because of he was pressed hard by his superiors to do that.

[durb]

"The problem with even the unpublished soviet archive material is, that one indeed can not trust them. Some might be fairly accurate while others more or less so - or even falsified. So which ones to trust and which ones not - that's the problem.

Some people believe, that only the published records were propaganda while the unpublished were not. This is simply not true.

Why? Like in the other countries the performance/victories/losses of a unit/individual/commander equalled success/unsuccess in ones military career also in the USSR. However unlike in the West it also sometimes meant the difference between life and death. One should remember, that only a couple years earlier tens of thousands of soviet officers were purged - which everybody well remembered. Especially in the Winter War but also in the early years of the Continuation War hiding losses/failures and exaggerating successes as well as possible was essential for your own health."


I have not personally studied original Soviet loss records as I do not know Russian and thus I´m not able to do any basic research of the Soviet archives (and not to speak about the time which such study requires). However people like C.F. Geust, Rune Rautio and others have done it and made quite convincing work showing that the losses were recorded quite accurately at the unit level. Soviets were well informed about their high losses, failures and problems.

The argument that the stalinist system forced Soviet commanders to falsify the combat records in order to save themselves from punishment can be treated with following counterargument: hiding losses and giving false data about them would have been equally punishable and thus dangerous for the commanders. High rates of accidents and big numbers of non-combat losses did not look any better in the record of unit and unit commander than operational losses, they might have been even more problematic for the commanders. For example the famous Soviet fighter pilot and air commander Pavel Rychagov was sacked (and later executed) from his position during the spring 1941 due to accusations based on high accident rates in Soviet air units.

Losses had to be recorded in unit records whatever the reason. Unit commanders (including the Soviet ones) needed replacements for the lost planes and lost aircrews in order to keep their units operational so what would have been the point of not recording losses and thus claiming that there were more operational planes and pilots in the unit than there actually were? How long could they have been lying about the losses and about the actual numbers of operational planes and pilots in certain periods without being caught of lying and punished for it?

[Juha Tompuri]

The argument that the stalinist system forced Soviet commanders to falsify the combat records in order to save themselves from punishment can be treated with following counterargument: hiding losses and giving false data about them would have been equally punishable and thus dangerous for the commanders. High rates of accidents and big numbers of non-combat losses did not look any better in the record of unit and unit commander than operational losses, they might have been even more problematic for the commanders.

IIRC Finnish historian Ohto Manninen wrote at some of his books that the Soviet casualtie numbers during Winter War were downplayed from the real by some commanders.

For example the famous Soviet fighter pilot and air commander Pavel Rychagov was sacked (and later executed) from his position during the spring 1941 due to accusations based on high accident rates in Soviet air units.

There might also been other reasons for finally killing him.

Regards, Juha

[tramonte]

It's pretty interesting (though little bit dangerous) to compare numbers of captured Soviet pilots from June to August 1944 to those Finnish pilots captured during whole Continuation War. Sample is absolutely too small but interesting anyway. 27 Finnish pilots or aircrew members were captured during 1941-44. Finns lost 215 aircraft in combat missions. On the other hand Finns captured only 35 Soviet airmen from June to August 1944. Such a relatively small number of POWs is not suggesting any kind of huge dramatic losses for Soviet forces. If i had to make any kind of guess suggesting their aircraft losses, then it would be circa 400 +/- 50 lost aircraft in combat missions.

[tramonte]

Juutilainen says in an interview, in a television programme made about him in the late 90's, that his claim was something like 126 (could be in youtube or at least someone has it on VHS). The score 94 was never a "claim" but the number he was granted by the data analysis and it has during these years become the official figure. As long as we operate with estimates and generalizations only, we'd better not to believe anything but just keep waiting until we see the hard evidence.

Since the Finnish own loss statistics are done by plane-by-plane method, the loss to all causes reveals that only about half of the total losses occur due to direct enemy activity. In Risto Pajari's book Jatkosota ilmassa he gives the number of Finnish planes losses during 1941-45 as 423 which is quite a high amount in my opinion. This number 423 breaks down to:

85 shot down by enemy planes
67 shot down by enemy AA
22 "never returned home"
23 was destroyed on ground in raids
18 to other causes
combat losses: 215

97 lost in accidents during missions
54 lost in pilot training
57 lost to other causes
non-combat losses: 208

total losses 423

If we assume that the 150 lost La-5's were flown in equal circumstances, this comparison would provide that only 30 La-5's was lost in aircombat during 1943-44 against Kuhlmey and HLeLv's 24, 26 and 34. Considering that Juutilainen got most of his kills during this very period, it would totally put his score to a new light and probably delete the entire score of likes Katajainen, Luukkainen, Wind, Lehtovaara etc.

22 "never returned home" could be something like half accidents (suddenly) other half shot down by enemy aircraft /AA (even friendly fire).
18 to other causes - most likely known accidents, bad weather, crash when landings or even combat loss

I checked the data of deceased soldiers and in 17.06.44 Lauri Nissinen was not marked as KIA but "reason of death without enemy action" which is absolutely not true. He deceased during air combat but not because enemy aircraft shot his aircraft down. His death was KIA.

When it comes to claims of Finnish pilots in period of 9 June to about 15 July 1944 the chance of over claiming was very high because intensiveness in Karelian Isthmus (some 50 Finnish-German fighters vs. 1,000 of VVS/PVO/VVS KBF). My personal guess is at least 1 to 3 but may have been even 1 to 4. I'd suggest that over claim rate of Finnish AA gunners have been even higher. No way have they shot down 340 in June and 200 in July (including all fronts, not just Karelian Isthmus). These numbers just can't match with reality.

[Mangrove]

I'd suggest that over claim rate of Finnish AA gunners have been even higher. No way have they shot down 340 in June and 200 in July (including all fronts, not just Karelian Isthmus). These numbers just can't match with reality.

The official claim for aircrafts shot down by Finnish anti-aircraft artillery between 1 and 30 June 1944 is 336. Total of 214 aircrafts (including 162 IL-2) were claimed to have been shot down by the anti-aircraft in July 1944. There were no claims between 1 and 8 June. Here are the June claims divided into types:

238 IL-2
29 PE-2
18 P-39
11 LA-5
10 Unknown single-engine
8 DB-3F
7 Boston
4 LAGG-3
3 P-40
3 YAK-7 B
2 SB-2
1 SB-?
1 IL-4
1 YAK-4