Soviet Forces

Air ram

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The Air Force of the Third Reich (Luftwaffe) had to experience the fury of Soviet "falcons" from the very beginning of the war with the Soviet Union. Henry Goering, Reich Minister of the Imperial Ministry of Aviation in 1935-1945, was forced to forget his boastful words that "Nobody can ever achieve air superiority over German Ases!" On the first day of the Great Patriotic War, German pilots encountered such a device as an air ram. This method was first proposed by the Russian aviator NA Yatsuk (in the journal "Bulletin of Aeronautics" No. 13-14 for 1911), and in practice was also used for the first time by the Russian pilot Peter Nesterov on September 8, 1914, when he shot down an Austrian airplane- scout. In the Great Patriotic War, the air ram was not provided for by the military regulations, any instructions or instructions, and Soviet pilots resorted to this method not by order of the command. Soviet people were moved by love for their country, hatred of the invaders and the fury of the battle, a sense of duty and personal responsibility for the fate of the Fatherland. As the chief air marshal (since 1944), twice Hero of the Soviet Union Alexander Aleksandrovich Novikov, who was the commander of the Soviet Air Force from May 1943 to 1946: "The air ram is not only lightning speed, exceptional bravery and self-control. The ram in the sky is first of all a readiness for self-sacrifice, the last test for loyalty to its people, its ideals. This is one of the highest forms of manifestation of the same moral factor inherent in the Soviet man, whom the enemy did not take into account and could not take into account. " 636 air rams during the Great Patriotic War were made by Soviet pilots taken from fb/History of WW2