RUSSIA’S AIR FORCE

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 October 1939, Page 8

RUSSIA’S AIR FORCE

CONFLICTING ESTIMATES In view of the changed attitude of Russia and the possibility of her lending assistance to Germany, increased attention is being directed to her military power. Her army is immense, but it is not mobile; her navy is an unknown quantity, bub at the most flattering estimate it is unequal to any of the forces possessed by the Western Powers. Russia’s greatest strength for any campaign outside her own borders lies in her air force. In recent years this has become, numerically, a powerful fleet with a large and rapidlyincreasing personnel, not. only of pilots but of “air soldiers” trained in the use of parachutes. Like nearly everything else Russian, however, a good deal of doubt and mystery is attached to the Red air force. While admittedly it is large, opinions vary considerably as to its precise size. The figures relating to the number of military aeroplanes have been set as low as 4000 and as high as 17,000. Experts writing immediately before the war were in agrement that the latter total is a grossly exaggerated one, and were inclined to set the number at between 5000 and 6000.

Some interesting examples of the manner in Which various publications have disagreed on the question are quoted by a writer in “The Nineteenth Century.” He points out that: The “Wehrmacht,” a German military organ, refers to the Russia ah’ force as being between 15,000 and 17,000 strong in 1937. A Czech paper, “Venkov,” said six months or so ago that by 1938 Russia would have 16,000 machines. One, Colonel Von Bulow, claimed that there were 8000 or 10,000 Russian aircraft in 1937. M. Pierre Cot, Minister for Air in the French Popular Front Government, stated in 1937 (when Franco-Russian relations were of the very best) that “Russia’s firstline air strength would be about 4,500 to 5000 machines; of these about a quarter would have to he retained in the Far East.”

Another former French Minister for Air, M. Laurent Eynac, in July of last year, credited Russia with 3000 first-line machines. This figure is also named in “Air Forces of the World, 1939.”

In a book published last year a German expert, Herr Fischer Von Poturzyn, had this to say: Particulars of the Soviet air arm are uncommonly vague. When, in 1936, the Franco-Russian military pact was enjoying its honeymoon the French technical Press was full of appreciation of the Russian air rearmament. It could be inferred that the object of the admiration was very diversely estimated. Some spoke of a first-line strength at that time, 1936, of 4,600 first-line machines and 1,400 second line, others of SOOO to 10,000 machines; while foreign publications of the year 1937 in regard to first-line air strengths displayed more caution, showing Russia to have 4,600 firstline machines. These were divisible into the three classes of offensive, defensive and communication aircraft. To them there would have to be added, in accordance with the usual international reckoning, the reserve machines. Is the present total strength of the Russian air arm to be taken as 10,000 or 5000 machines?

According to Von Poturzyn’s own estimate the Russian strength in first-line machines will not reach 7000 till 1940 and is round about 6,500 now. After summing up all these conflicting claims the magazine writer previously referred to adds: — “On the whole one would probably not be far wrong if one computed Russia’s first-line strength at something between 4000 and 5000 machines. This is slightly more, in all probability, than Germany’s first-line strength, but German performance is likely to be superior to Russian. “Britain is second to none in the quality of her aircraft mainly because she has the best liquid-cooled engine in the world. Engines have always been a weakness in Russia. A. W. Just in his “Militarmacht Sowjetunion" (1935) criticised Russian engines as being too heavy. The criticism is still true to-day.