Table of Contents

In the spring of 1938, Stalin presided over a meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party which gave its findings on the state of the Soviet aircraft industry. He was assisted by members of the Presidium, the Narkomavprom, the Glavaviaprom, etc.

Russian "fighters" were on the agenda seeing that the aircraft sent to Spain in support of the Republican cause against the Nationalists were being given a hammering by their German counterparts in the Condor Legion. Up until then, the Polikarpov I-15 (sesquiplane) and I-16 (monoplane) fighters had won air superiority over anything that was flying around in the Spanish skies; they had also got themselves a serious reputation, as much for their speed and manoeuvrability, as for their firepower. But the advent of new German fighters on the scene in 1937 upset all this. The Soviet planes were outclassed, and Polikarpov's I-16 and Willy Messerschmitt's Bf 109B were compared at length during this meeting.

This book offers an exhaustive coverage, by chronological order which is one of its original features every single Soviet fighter of the period, from obscure projects which did no go off the drawing table, to the best known mass-produced models.