The Soviet-Finnish border, from Lake Ladoga northward to the Barents Sea, was a sparsely manned yet important part of the war over the Eastern Front. As the only warm water (i.e. ice-free) port in northern Russia, Murmansk played an integral part in the shipping of American and British war machinery to the Soviet Union. The defense of this area fell to two Soviet Armies: the Seventh and the Fourteenth. The Fourteenth Army was concentrated primarily on the western part of the Kola Peninsula, while the Seventh stretched from the Kola southward to Lake Ladoga.

Air defense of the Kola Peninsula was provided by the VVS-Fourteenth Army and the VVS of the Soviet Northern Fleet (VVS-Severnyy Flot or VVS-SF), under the command of General-Mayor Aleksandr Kuznetsov.

One particular unit of the VVS-SF was the 72 SAP (later to become the 2nd Guards SAP), based at Vayenga Airdrome. At the beginning of the Barbarossa Campaign, the 72SAP consisted of the following aircraft:

I-16: 4
I-153: 17
I-15bis (I-152): 28
SB: 11

Pilots in the far north were an interesting lot, regarded as some of the most experienced and aggressive in the entire Soviet air forces. Almost half had more than two years of combat experience, to include many veterans of the Spanish Civil War and the Winter War of 1939-1940 between Finland and the Soviet Union.

It is interesting to note that hostilities commenced between the air forces of the north and the German Luftwaffe before the official onset of the war. On June 17th, 1941, a lone Ju-88 was pursued by the Soviets after probing the area around Murmansk; several other Ju-88’s were sighted and fired on by AA northwest of Murmansk. These intrusions continued on a daily basis, the beginning of the German attempt to take the city of Murmansk and secure its warm-water port. Starshiy leytenant Boris Safonov, a Zveno commander in 5 Eskadrilya, led the 72nd in its aggressive defense of Murmansk and the shipping industry.

German intrusions continued into August, when three German destroyers led a naval raid on August 10 into Kola Bay. Safonov and the pilots of the 72 SAP aggressively defended the port, and in turn kept the Luftwaffe from attaining total air supremacy in the north.

“The first months of the year were a very hard time for the fliers of the Northern Fleet. The enemy was numerically superior. Without any regard to losses, [the Germans] attempted to break through to Murmansk. Safonov and his comrades flew five, six, and even ten sorties daily. They hardly got any sleep. Using their parachutes as pillows, they slept during short intervals, literally under the wings of their planes, while the ground crews were busy refueling and [reloading the guns]. This took no more than fifteen to twenty minutes, and then they sat in their cockpits again and were in the air, attacking the enemy.” War memoirs of Starshiy Leytenant Sergey Kurzenkov.

Western reinforcements, in the form of Hawker Hurricane IIB’s, began arriving by ship in August of 1941. With the exception of the radio equipment, they were not particularly well received.

Pilots of the RAF 81 and 134 squadrons, who in addition to training the 72SAP flew combat missions along the front, accompanied the new planes. They were quite impressed with Safonov; Kurzenkov recounts that after one particular mission the RAF pilots took him upon their shoulders with cries of “All right Safon! Very good Safon!” By September, Safonov had scored his 15th victory, and was awarded the Golden Star of a Hero of the Soviet Union, the highest Soviet award.

In 1941, the 72SAP of the VVS-SF is credited with having downed 140 enemy aircraft; 49 of these victories occurred in the first three months alone.

A mission by the 72SAP in late September proved to be their greatest victory and one of the most successful missions of the entire war. Dispatched to destroy a bridge near Petsamo, the entire unit – consisting of 28 fighters and 9 bombers – dropped enough ordinance to create a massive landslide. Their primary target, as well as every other crossing along the river, was destroyed in an ensuing flood. A massive invasion force, bent on victory in Murmansk, was stranded for ten days, effectively removing any possibility of a German capture of this strategic port.

“Military history has never seen another case like this, that so spectacularly and dramatically cut off the supply lines of an entire front with two divisions” Paul Carell

more to come....