Ivan Kozhedub; Alexander Pokryshkin As a spin-off from my thread on Erich Hartmann, Ace of Aces of all nations and all time, I have looked at the top-scoring Allied Aces: Ivan Kozhedub (officially 62 victories) and Alexander Pokryshkin (officially 59 victories). There isn’t a lot on the internet on them (unless you can read Russian), but another source is the chapter “Stalin Hawks” in Toliver and Constable’s biography of Hartmann “The Blond Knight of Germany” These two Soviet Airmen were very different in many ways. Kozhedub was born in 1920 in Ukraine, served initially as an instructor and flew in combat from March 1943, mainly flying the Lavochkin La5 and La7. He was created a Hero of the Soviet Union three times. Later he commanded the Soviet air mission in Korea; he was ordered not to fly in combat - Toliver and Constable suggest that he might have done, but he does not have a reputation as someone who would go against the orders of his superiors. Pokyshkin is in many ways a more interesting character and arguably a greater air fighter than Kozhedub. For starters, some researchers suggest his true score was considerably more than 59. He was born in 1913 in Novosibirsk, a particularly cold, bleak and deprived locality. He trained first as an aviation mechanic and did not learn to fly until he was 24. When the war in the East began, he was flying Mig-3s, and sometimes open-cockpit Polikarpov I-16s, getting frost-bitten cheeks on several occasions. His first victim was when he downed a Soviet Sukhoi SU-2 light bomber in a friendly fire incident, killing the gunner, but then his true score started to mount. He gained most of his victories in the first eighteen months of the war, when the Russian aircraft and tactics were greatly inferior to the Germans: when Kozhedub entered combat in March 1943, the Russians had largely caught up in these respects. It was Pokryshkin who was largely responsible for developing effective Soviet tactics: he had studied the writings of WW1 aces, especially Rene Fonck, and in the months before the German invasion had spent many hours testing and analysing effective fighter tactics, gunnery techniques, etc. Not for the first time, he came under suspicion from the Soviet political system for criticizing policy. Fortunately his scoring rate in combat could not be ignored when the Soviet propaganda needed heroes. He was created a Gold Star Hero of the Soviet Union three times, the only Soviet serviceman to be so. Once the Russians acquired Bell P39 Airacobras, this became his favourite fighter - he especially loved the 37mm cannon - and he was preparing to use the P63 Kingcobra when the war ended. However for the last couple of years of the war, he was largely prevented from flying in combat by order of the Soviet government who did not want to risk the loss of one of their heroes. Pokryshkin may well have been a better human being than Kozhedub. The latter had a reputation for losing wingmen, due to plunging into battle without regard for their safety. Hartmann proved that it was possible to achieve high scores without losing wingmen, and pointed out that if you shot down an enemy but lost your wingman, you had lost the battle. Kozhedub appears to have been very much a creature of the Communist Party. According to Toliver and Constable, his autobiography is a disappointing ghost-written affair, which says that his proudest moment was being admitted as a member of the Communist Party. Pokryshkin, however, fell into political disfavour for being too outspoken on several occasions, not least immediately after the war due to his preference for American lend-lease aircraft over Soviet ones. To be fair, Kozhedub having been born seven years after Pokryshkin had spent more of his education under the Soviet system, so free-thinking would have come even less easily. Both men eventually became Air Force Generals, but Pokryshkin was never given a major operational command after the war. Pokryshkin died in 1985 aged 72; Kozhedub in 1991 aged 71. Pilots Alexander Ivanovich Pokryshkin. Pilots Ivan Nikitovich Kozhedub. Ivan Nikitovich Kozhedub - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Aleksandr Ivanovich Pokryshkin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The tags on the attached pictures are confusing - the black and white one is Pokryshkin with his P39; the colour one is titled "Ivan the Terrible" and shows Kozhedub's Lavochkin
I found this interview very interesting: TheHistoryNet | Aces | Aviation History: Interview with World War II Soviet Ace Ivan Kozhedub
Thanks, wish I'd found that when I wrote my piece above! Probably by the 1980's he could afford to come accross as a bit more human than when he wrote his autobiography in the 50's. I still wonder if he was toeing the then-current party line by approving of perestroika. But the last line, about wanting all weapons of war to be confined to museums, is a good one. Interesting also that the Russians appeared to allocate particular aircraft to their fliers who would stay with them. So he reckons the Germans lost 44,000 aircraft over the Eastern Front. If true, a huge figure which points up just how exceptional the aces were.
