Osprey Aircraft of the Aces S.
2 primary works
Book 15
Although initially equiped with very poor aircraft and robbed of effective leadership, due as much to Stalin's purges in the late 1930s as to the efforts of the Luftwaffe, Soviet fighter pilots soon turned the tables through the use of lend-lease aircraft like the Hurricane, Spitfire, P-39 and P-40, and home-grown machines like the MIG-3, LaGG-3/5, Lavochkin La-5/7/9 and Yak-1/3. The later Yaks and Lavochkins were easily superior to the Bf 109 and Fw 190 at low-level, the favoured "killing field" of pilots like Khozedub and Poryshkin, both of whom finished with higher scores than the leading pilots of the West. This volume aims to dispel many of the myths about combat on the Eastern Front.
Book 17
The Third Reich's last ditch efforts to combat the massed Allied bomber formations centred around the new jet-powered "wonder weapons" that were issued to the Jagdwaffe from mid-1944 onwards. Far in advance of anything the Allies had even in experimental phase, types such as the Me 262, He 162 and 163, and the Ar 234 could perform their combat sorties with relative impunity. Detailing both the planes and the pilots, this volume looks at the handful of pilots who amassed amazing scores in the last year of the war with these aircraft, flying with units like JG 7, JV 44 and NJG 6.