In the Skies over Kerch & Feodosia, Crimean Air War 1943-44 Volume 1

The battle for the Kerch Peninsula has been written about many times, but the air battle above it has not. For more than five months, the air forces of both sides flew almost without pause. Volume 1 of In the Skies over Kerch & Feodosia covers the situation facing the German 17th Army in late October 1943, cut off from the north and expecting a landing from the east, and details the opposing air forces: Vershinin's 4th Air Army and Yermachenkov’s Black Sea Fleet Air Force, 911 aircraft strong, against the small but formidable 1st Air Corps – the Stukas of III./SG 3, the Heinkels of I./KG 4, the Romanian 3rd Dive Bomber Group, and the Messerschmitts of II./JG 52, led by Gerhard Barkhorn, already credited with 177 victories. Soviet fighter pilots knew their LaGG-3s were outclassed and said so in their own reports, which are quoted at length in the book, along with many other contemporary documents.