'By failure of 'Zitadelle' we had suffered a decisive defeat. The Armored formation, reformed and...

'By failure of 'Zitadelle' we had suffered a decisive defeat. The Armored formation, reformed and re-equipped with so much effort, had lost heavily in both men and equipment and would now be unemployable for a long time to come. It was problematical whether they could be rehabilitated in time to defend the Eastern Front…[…] Needless to say the Russians exploited their victory to the full. There were no more periods of quiet on the Eastern Front. From now on the enemy was in undisputed possession of the initiative.'- Heinz Guderian
In late 1943, the situation on the Eastern Front had turned irreversibly. Hitler’s last hope of achieving a major tactical victory and of gaining some badly needed momentum, Operation ‘Zitadelle’ at Kursk in July 1943, had failed and ended in a disastrous defeat. Consequently, the whole mighty Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front was pushed back to the Dnepr River by a Red Army that had grown even mightier. In the air, an initial superiority achieved by the Luftwaffe’s fighters had been lost through a series of relentless air battles that tore down the Luftwaffe.
 The ability of the Red Army to overcome the first dark months of the war with Germany and recover from the immense setbacks suffered during 1941 and 1942, remains one of the greatest feats of the Second World War and was achieved not only in numerical and technical fields, but also in fighting spirit and pilot quality. This was mainly due to the unbreakable will of its soldiers and airmen to the last, and in parallel situations, the morale of other armed forces subject to such a vast onslaught had simply collapsed.
 However, the Soviets’ continued opposition had also resulted in terrifying losses and created gaps which could only be filled by dispatching large numbers of recruits to first-line service before their military training was completed. Thus, while the Red Army inevitably continued to sustain enormous losses into 1943, the Luftwaffe’s fighter pilots on the Eastern Front had greater possibilities to survive than their colleagues opposing the RAF and USAAF in the West and a core of Luftwaffe fighter pilots in the East were able to develop an immense wealth of experience never previously seen in any air force at war.
 One such example of a Luftwaffe pilot is Gerhard Barkhorn who, in late 1943, was a Hauptmann and Gruppenkommandeur of II./Jagdgeschwader 52. As a front-line fighter pilot since 1940, Barkhorn had flown his first combat missions during the Battle of Britain but scored no victories and, on one occasion, was shot down into the English Channel. In June 1941, Barkhorn and his unit were posted to East Prussia and took part in the opening attacks against the USSR on 22 June. During the next ten days, II./JG 52 flew hundreds of combat missions, mainly encountering only unescorted Soviet SB and DB-3 medium bombers, and claimed 30 shot down without losing a single aircraft in hostile action. Under these circumstances, Lt. Barkhorn could increase his experience and , on his 120th combat mission, flown on 2 July 1941, shot down a twin-engined DB-3 as his first aerial victory. When, two and a half years later, Haptm. Barkhorn shot down a Soviet Aircobra over the eastern Crimea at 12.15 hrs on 23 January 1944, it was his 238th victory, and when he landed his Messerschmitt BF 109 G-6 shortly afterward, he had completed his 1,000th combat mission.
 Although the Soviet Air Force, the VVS, had entered the war with an aircraft inventory that was of high world standards, and by late 1943, had overcome most of its previous qualitative shortcomings, it was still inferior to the Luftwaffe which maintained a technical superiority over the Soviets for most of the war. Two standard Luftwaffe fighter types then in service were the Fokke-Wulf FW 190 A4, A5 and A6 versions and the Messerschmitt BF 106 G-6, but whereas the Geschwader Stabsstaffel and the III./JG 51., and the Stab.I. and II./JG 54 were the only FW-190 equipped fighter units in the East, in this theater it was the BF 109 G-6 which was the most numerous Luftwaffe fighter type and which equipped all other Jagdgruppen. Still superior in aerial combat to most Soviet types, the BF 109 was, moreover, an aircraft with which the German veterans were familiar, having operated earlier versions since the 1930s.
 In early 1944, the aircraft inventory of the Soviet fighter arm was of varying quality. The old I-16s, I-153ss and Hurricanes had disappeared from front-line service, as had the MiG-3, which was phased out of production in favor of the II-2. Many Soviet units, however, still flew Lend-Lease Bell P-39 Aircrobra which, due to its poor power to weight ratio, could be out-climbed and out-turned by both BF-109 G-6 and the FW-190 As. A number of obsolete Lend-Lease Curtiss P-40 Warhawks were also still in first-line service with the VVS, but this type was hopelessly inferior to the German fighter types of 1944 and Luftwaffe fighter pilots claimed to have shot down more than 200 of them throughout the year.
 Far more dangerous advasaries for the Luftwaffe were the more recent Yak-1 and Yak-7B fighters which proved to be quiet a match, but these were succedded by the Yak-9, which saw extensive use through 1944. An even better Soviet fighter, which appeared during the latter half of 1941, was the La-5FN. In this version, an La-5 with a more powerful engine, the Soviets had for the first time a fighter superior to the German types, and this was followed by the La-7 and the Yak-3, two even more advanced Soviet fighters, both of which were considerably superior to the BF 109 G-6 and the F-190 A. So good were these types that in late 1944, Obslt. Hermann Graf, JG 52’s Geschwaderkommandore, was compelled to instruct his pilots to “avoid combat below 5,000 meters altitude with Yakolev fighters lacking a visible radiator under the nose”, i.e. the Yak-3, which was very fast and had an excellent rate of climb. In this, it was similar to the La-7, which could reach 5,000 meters in just four and a half minutes compared with the 6.8 minutes required by the FW-190 to reach the same altitude. Only with the later development of the FW-190 D-9 and the BF 109 K-4 were the Germans able to introduce fighters that could compete with these Soviet types.
 Another difference between the earlier fighter-versus-fighter combats on the Eastern Front and those in 1944 was that, by this time, radio transmitters and receivers finally became a standard feature in all Soviet fighters. Thus, one of the most important advantges that the Jgdwaffe pilots had enjoyed in the earlier years had finally disappeared. The Soviets had also copied much of the German operational methods and doctrines, as did most other air forces.Ever since the Spanish Civil War, Luftwaffe fighter pilots had operated in close teams in which the Rottenfhrer was the sword and the wingman, or Rottenflieger, served as a shield. by 1943, this methods was in common use by the VVS fighter pilots who also started operating in offensive sweeps over enemy-controlled territory in the manner of the Jagdwaffe’s ‘frie Jagd’ or free hunt. This led to the development of a new core of successful VVS fighter aces, such as Vitaliy Popkov, Grigory Rechkalov, and Aleksandr Pokryshkin. Up to the end of 1943, Pokryshkin was credited with shooting down 48 German aircraft, by which time he had gained the experience accumulated in some 500 combat missions. However, while there were very few Soviet pilots with the experience necessary to match that of the immensely skilled ‘Experten’ in the Jagdgeschwader, the core of top Soviet aces emerged during 1943 was far more experienced than the average Allied fighter pilot in the West who did not encounter the superior fighter opposition faced by the Soviet Airmen.