The Eastern Front air war 1941-1945 - Anthony Tucker-Jones

This selection of over 150 photographs provides a visual guide to the desperate air war fought over the Eastern Front between 1941 and 1945. Most of these black-and-white wartime photographs have never been published before. - They show Stalin?s Red Air Force and Hitler?s Luftwaffe, their equipment and the role they played in supporting the war on the ground. Although it was a major aspect of the struggle on the Eastern Front, aerial combat has long been neglected, and Anthony Tucker-Jones?s photographic history is a vivid introduction to it. - Just before Hitler?s invasion of the Soviet Union the leadership of the Red Air Force was decimated by Stalin in a series of purges. Although it had thousands of fighter aircraft these were not capable of taking on the Luftwaffe and were swiftly destroyed in the German blitzkrieg. But a remarkable recovery followed as the Red Air Force slowly but surely turned the tide against the ravages of the Luftwaffe to wrestle back air superiority by 1944. - The photographs and Anthony Tucker-Jones?s text give a fascinating insight into this decisive reversal of fortune. They also record, in a series of memorable images, the principal Soviet and German aircraft that featured in the aerial fighting and the pilots who flew them. - -