Red Cross Against the Swastika by Vasily B Emelianenko
French Eagles Soviet Heroes by John D Clarke
Emelianenko was an IL-2 pilot during WW2. This is a biography and the story about him and his squadron 1942-1945, he wrote it as a tribute to all his fallen comrades so that they should be remembered.
I learnt a lot about the IL2 that I did not know, one thing is that the gunner had no armor protection and that pilots often rtb:ed with a dead gunner, that’s why many pilots preferred one-seaters. The gunner only had 150 rounds in a bad machine gun, his job was more to navigate and being an observer telling the pilot where to turn.
The book is well written, you will become a part of Emilianenkos squad and his friends when reading, getting to know them as personalities. Causality rates were very high, especially on non-escorted missions.
Another interesting thing is how missions were planned. As pilots got their target, they started to plan the route, often flying a dogleg route behind German lines to attack from the West. The flightleader decided waypoints, and calculated the flying time between them, checking his clock and map during the flight, often at tree-top level.
During later Russian offensive part of WW2 there was always an officer on the ground near frontline targets, guiding via radio the IL2:s to find and hit specific targets.
The second book looked very promising, as it is about the French Normandie-Niemen squad, flying Yaks over the Eastern front. They were feared by the Germans, and Keitel ordered that anyone of them that was captured should be shot on the spot…
The book is built on the Normandy-Niemen war diary, and the bad thing is that details are missing. There are 250 pages with short descriptions of missions, much too short in my opinion. After some reading the short descriptions become very boring, as they are the same stuff over and over again. The book is not written from a pilot’s point of view, this is an administrative summary of a squad diary.
So, the Emelianenko book is very interesting reading, as good as the Lipfert biography that I also rate very high. But I don’t recommend the book about Normandie-Niemen for a flying enthusiast unless you have a great interest in their general war story.
I got both books from Amazon.uk
