Overview
The air war over the critical Eastern Front is illustrated with 120 specially selected and informatively captioned photographs in this striking new book. Initial success in Russia during the summer of 1941 gave way to desperate days after Stalingrad and the failure of Germany's last major offensive in 1943. Subsequently the Luftwaffe was stripped of its newest fighters for the defense of the Reich and lost air superiority to the Red Air Force. Unusual scenes include bombed-out Russian aircraft abandoned during the initial German advance and the use of horses and oxen to haul supplies and even aircraft, as fuel became scarce toward the end of the war. Several pictures of aircraft operated by the Germans' Rumanian allies add to the full insight given by this book into the air war in the East.