 |
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||||||
VVS (Voenno-Vozdushnie Sili) formed the official designation of the airforce of the Soviet Union.
The VVS was founded as the "Workers' and Peasants' Air Fleet" in 1918. After being placed under control of the Red Army, with the official denomination VVS in 1930, its influence on aircraft design became greater.
One of first big tests of the VVS came in 1938 with the Spanish Civil War, where the latest aircraft designs were put to the test by up-to-date German aircraft.
In 1939, the VVS used its bombers to attack Finland, but the losses and the eventual defeat led to large-scale purges by Stalin.
The main reason of the great amount of aircraft lost was the lack of modern tactics, but time to improve them was short, because the German offensive of 1941 (Operation Barbarossa) pushed the airforce into a defensive position, while being confronted with more modern German aircraft.
As with many allied countries in the Second World War the Soviet Union received western aircraft by lend-lease.
In the early years of the Cold War the VVS focused on escort fighters, point-defense fighters and long-range bombers.
The VVS Aircraft inventory of 1987 comprised:
3050 helicopters
1500 trainers and training helicopters
200 reconnaissance and ECM aircraft (Tu-16, Tu-95, Tu-22, An-12)
465 transports and trainers
|
||||
| View Live Article | This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License | |
||
