Top Ace in American made plane

[comiso90]

It has never quite sat right with me that the top ace in American made plane was a Russian! Flying a P-39 none-the-less!

Grigori A. Rechkalov shot down 50 aircraft in a P-39. The Ruskies loved the plane at medium/low altitude. I guess the battlefield conditions in the East where armor clashes dominated the strategy were conducive to the P-39.

Soviet P-39 Aces

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[timshatz]

Pretty cool link.

[Soundbreaker Welch?]

I guess the Ruskies apreciated our throw away gift.

[comiso90]

Nikolay Gulaev
Among these top Soviet Airacobra aces, the most "efficient" has to be Nikolay Gulaev. He flew his first P-39 combat mission on 9 August 1943 and his last mission on 14 August 1944. In 12 months and five days he shot down 41 German aircraft while flying the P-39. No other Soviet pilot scored so effectively. By the way, Gulaev was the number 3 Soviet ace with 57 individual and 3 shared kills by war's end. He went on to command high-level Soviet Air Force units, his last being the 10th Air Army headquartered in Archangelsk. He was relieved of this command in 1974 when his subordinates were observed to be shooting polar bears with their aircraft cannon. He died in 1985. The book's author, Dmitriy Loza, knew him personally, having lived several years in the same apartment building in Moscow. Loza indicated that Gulaev never recovered from the personal shame of having been relieved of command in this manner and died a broken-hearted man.

Soviet P-39 Aces

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