Spitfires on the Eastern Front?

Spitfires on the Eastern Front. I've thought about that for a long time, if there were any, and it turns out there were loads. The Spitfire was one hell of a plane, my favourite in amongst the Allied air fleet. Very stylish, yet very aggressive at the same time. Absolutely beautiful, even more beautiful than the MiG 3 If they call the Aston Martin 'sex on wheels', this has got to be 'sex with wings' for sure It's a really iconic image in the RAF colours, but with Soviet stripes and stars the Spitfire is kinda strange I'm not used to seeing it in those colours anyhow.

Anyway, can anybody tell me how many were lend-leased to the USSR?
Any legendary pilots, battles that it was involved in? Add photos as well


Spitfire MK. IX in Soviet colours

 

I found the following site
Spitfires over the Kuban




They had hurricanes too
RAF Hurricanes in Russia


http://lend-lease.airforce.ru/english/articles/sheppard/hurricanes/index.htm

 

Thanks -tmm-! And keep 'em coming The planes were shipped via the Norwegian Sea, am I correct? Or perhaps via the Baltic.. but that would've been too dangerous, I expect.

 

During 1943, some 150 Spitfires Mk V were handed to the Soviets, plus a further 50 non-airworthy airframes that were broken up for spears. From February 1944, the Soviets began to receive Spitfire Mk IXs and totals for this aircraft appear to have been 190 LF IXCs, 989 LF IXEs and 2 HF IXEs. (source: Osprey Aircraft of the Aces 074 - Soviet Lend-Lease Fighter Aces of WWII)



The Soviet Spitfires in Russian:

Soviet Fighter Aces of 1936 - 1953 years

There stays that 143 Spitfire MK V and 1185 Spitfire Mk IX were received (if I translated it right).

 

Indeed, you translated correctly - 143 MK Vs and 1185 Mk IXs. 1183 of which were the LF IX version and 2 (!) of the HF IX version. (LF meant 'Low flight' or something). Wonder what happened to the 2 HF IXs. Must've been a pretty elite plane, since there were only 2 in the whole Soviet Air Force.

The Germans should've been pretty surprised to see Spitfires back then on the Eastern Front After the Battle of Britain and all, they must've been right ticked off

Were any Spitfires involved in the Battle for Berlin?

 

Wonder what happened to the 2 HF IXs.


According to Osprey two Spitfire HF IXs were being used for flight testing.

 

Oh That's logical, I get it now It seemed weird - 1183 LFs and only 2 HFs. Test flights, damn them.

 

Wonder if they lend leased the ground crew to start with too!

Dee

 

Seeing that Hurricanes have been previously mentioned I think that this link may be of interest to some.

.::Atoll Productions::.

A great Spitfire website with many other good Spitfire links.

The Spitfire - A history of the WW2 RAF Fighter

Regards
Tom

 

Why not?

 

Contact was limited to the bare minimum due to the language barrier, and above all for the usual political reasons. Even the merchant marine sailors arriving at the Lend-Lease ports did not get a very pleasant liberty at port

 

I guess that makes sense. Although I would have thought that the political element would have only kicked in after 1945 with the Cold War and everything. They were Allies back then, during the war I mean, why not show the Commies how the plane worked? I bet the labels were all in English as well. Given that nearly nobody in the Soviet Air Force spoke a word of English, controlling the damned machine would be rather difficult Wildly random switch and lever selection Must've been fun. That aside, I guess there were traslators for that kind of thing.

 

Contact was limited to the bare minimum due to the language barrier, and above all for the usual political reasons.

Was it prevented by the Russian authorities mainly? With Stalin in charge I suppose they were very very uptight about fraternisation in case some of the Russian people from seeing another way of life.

Dee

 

Contact was limited to the bare minimum due to the language barrier, and above all for the usual political reasons. Even the merchant marine sailors arriving at the Lend-Lease ports did not get a very pleasant liberty at port
Laurence Rees in his book about Stalin, mentions this more than once about Sailors who arrived at Murmansk and Archangel.

 

Was it prevented by the Russian authorities mainly? With Stalin in charge I suppose they were very very uptight about fraternisation in case some of the Russian people from seeing another way of life.

Fraternisation... well, that's a thought. Yes, I would think that to be one of the reasons. Churchill and Stalin had a rather cold relationship, and, analogically, I think, their subjects and dependants were 'encouraged', if I may say so, to relate to each other in the same way. Then you've got ideological and cultural differences, language barriers etc. So, yeah.

I bet it was the same between the SU and the Americans. However, there's this one film. 'Peregon' it's called. It's a Russian movie, set in the GPW, and it depicts the relationship between the crew of a military airfield in Chuckotka or someplace, and the air crews (which were female, actually) of the USAF that flew over planes to the SU, that airfield in particular. The planes were flown over, repainted, then handed over to Soviet pilots to get them to the Western Front. The characters do quite a bit of talking, instructing, not so much. But no coldness or neglect in sight, surprisingly. It just doesn't fit in with the overall context. I don't know if there are translations available, but if there are any, it's definitely worth a look. I enclosed some screenshots and posters. I think that subtitles are definitely available, but an audio translation.. I dunno.

Ïåðåãîí - ôèëüì Àëåêñàíäðà Ðîãîæêèíà. Îôèöèàëüíûé ñàéò.

 

I remember reading the memoirs of a USAAC liaison officer in Fairbanks, Al., whose job was to dispatch LL planes and equipment to the URSS across the Bering Strait, and a good part of the book was his griping about his Soviet counterpart who had to be an NKVD officer.

Interesting reading. I'm still looking for it, it was appended in some far-right US website so it's natural I'm taking trouble finding it again.

---- Update ----

Here it is. Careful, the site is nuttier than a fruitcake, and this major Jordan per what I read elsewhere has some "issues" too...

 

this major Jordan per what I read elsewhere has some "issues" too

What kind of issues Are you saying that he was a nut of some kind?

 

I am off to Krakow next month and I believe there is a Spitfire in Polish livery at the local Air Museum.

I will try and get a piccie