Page 88 - The Chief Culprit

Winged Genghis Khan y 65

“Stalin’s Pipe Organs.” e Communists called this an economic miracle, but there was no
miracle. Simply during the period of secret mobilization Soviet industry was prepared to
produce rocket missiles for the Su-2.
ese weapons were much more effective when they armed the Su-2: artillerists had first
to receive information about their targets, while pilots could seek out the targets themselves;
artillerists sent their missiles several kilometers away, without seeing the target, while pilots
flew hundreds of kilometers, saw their target and the results of their work; the next wave of
airplanes always had the opportunity to finish the unfinished mission of the previous one.
Production of the Su-2 was stopped, but industry continued to produce rocket missiles
by the millions. ey were simply readjusted to be fired from ground installations and other
types of airplanes. Production of 100,000 to 150,000 Su-2 planes was planned for conditions
in which the Red Army would deliver the first attack, and nobody would hinder the industry’s
work. Hitler ruined Stalin’s plan. But even after losing all the supplies of aluminum, and most
of its aircraft and motor factories, the Soviet Union produced 38,729 airplanes, which were
incomparably more complex in terms of production—the Il-2 and Il-10. Additionally, tens of
thousands of planes of other types, all more complex than the Ivanov, were produced.
One more question: where did Stalin plan to find so many pilots to fly 100,000 to
150,000 Su-2 airplanes? is was not a problem. Stalin prepared an excess of pilots. True,
they were trained to fly in clear skies. ese pilots were not asked to have high-level pilot
skills, to be able to fly at night, or to be able to navigate well in new places and situations. A
huge number of Soviet pilots were trained for easy work: take off at dawn, fly in a powerful
formation in a straight line, and reach the target. Pilots with this sort of qualification were not
needed in defensive war, just like the Su-2 plane they were trained to fly. ere were so many
trained pilots that in 1942 many of them were given rifles and dropped by the thousands over
Stalingrad, to reinforce the infantry. 10
Hitler destroyed the plans of a Soviet invasion, but he did not even have a hint of
Stalin’s true might, of the seriousness of his intentions, of how well Stalin was prepared to
lead a war of aggression. In March 1939 at the Eighteenth Congress of the Communist Party,
Stalin declared: “ e aviation arms race in the capitalist countries [has continued] for a num-
ber of years and unquestionably presents one of the most characteristic and definitive signs of
the inevitable general military conflict.” Stalin was right: in the late 1930s, there was a truly
mad race in aviation technology. Military aviation forces in some of the largest Western na-
tions reached two to three thousand aircraft and even crossed that threshold. Germany was
far in the lead. e German air force reached four thousand warplanes. In March 1939, it was
clear to Stalin that such a number of warplanes signaled the inevitability of a war—exactly as
it happened. In that same year, 1939, Hitler began his war for global domination.
If we call three or four thousand warplanes by the term “wild arms race of aviation
weapons,” then what do we call the preparations to produce the Su-2? If four thousand of
Hitler’s warplanes of all types were enough testimony of the “inevitability of a general mili-
tary conflict,” then what in that case does the preparation for producing 100,000 warplanes
of just one type attest to?