POLITICAL MILITARY, OPERATIONAL AND AIR SITUATION IN THE SOUTHWESTERN STRATEGIC DIRECTION OF THE SOVIET-GERMAN FRONT BY AUGUST 1944

Abstract

Domestic aviation has more than a century of history. By the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, it was at the level of the air forces of the most developed countries of the world. In the fight against the German fascist invaders, Soviet pilots almost always successfully solved the combat missions assigned to them. The theory of the use of the Air Force, developed in the interwar period, played an important role in achieving these successes. Historical experience shows that the search for ways to effectively use combat aircraft was ambiguous and was a complex process. It was characterized by a struggle between scientific and theoretical views on the main aspects of the use of aviation for military purposes. Many of them, as the experience of the Great Patriotic War showed, were confirmed by practice, others were rejected as unviable, and others, for opportunistic reasons, were declared politically harmful. The purpose of this work is to trace the development of the domestic operational art of the Air Force and to consider the influence of the experience of the Great Patriotic War on the construction of modern Aerospace Forces, emphasizing the main idea: without copying the gigantic and cumbersome structures of the US Air Force and NATO during air operations, to propose relevant, asymmetric and effective answers to modern challenges.