Operation Benedict
Operation Benedict was a company during the Second World War , in which a fighter unit of the British Royal Air Force, together with units of the Soviet air force in the North Sea, was used against the German air force and the Finnish Suomen ilmavoimat .
prehistory
On June 22, 1941, the Soviet Union was attacked by the troops of the German Reich and its allies and thus an ally of Great Britain . As part of the arms aid that had been agreed for this state ( Lend Lease Act ), Winston Churchill commissioned the British ambassador in Moscow, Stafford Cripps , to explore the possibilities of a joint cooperation. Cripps then submitted to the Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov on June 27 a proposal for a British-Soviet operation to protect the northern sea convoys that were to make their way through the North Sea to the destination ports of Murmansk and Arkhangelsk . At the same time pilots of the WWS (Vojenno-vosduschnyje sily, Soviet air forces) should be instructed on British aircraft in order to then take over the aircraft. The plan was confirmed in talks in London on July 9 between the British Admiralty and a Soviet delegation and a cabinet meeting scheduled for the next day.
execution
On July 12, a British commission with representatives from the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force arrived in Murmansk to review the situation on site. On their recommendation, it was decided to use the Wajenga airfield for the company. The contingent was originally supposed to consist of two squadrons of hurricane fighters and one squadron of twin-engine Blenheims and Beaufighters . Ultimately, on July 25, the Commander in Chief of the British Air Force Charles Portal decided to deploy only the Hurricane squadrons. These were reorganized as the 81st and 134th Squadron on July 29 and 31, respectively, and combined in the 151st Wing. They consisted of a total of 39 aircraft and 550 pilots and ground personnel. Commander was Neville Ramsbottom Isherwood appointed. The pilots had been withdrawn from the 81st and 504th Squadron or had just completed their training.
Most of the soldiers embarked with 15 hurricanes packed in boxes on the steamer Llanstephan Castle in the port of Scapa Flow . The remaining 24 aircraft were stationed with their pilots on board the aircraft carrier " Argus ". The ships left Scapa Flow on August 17, 1941 with the convoy Dervish . In the night from August 31st to September 1st, the "Llanstephan Castle" reached the destination port of Arkhangelsk. The 15 hurricanes were assembled at the nearby Keg-Ostrow airfield and flown over to Wajenga on September 9th. The planes of the “Argus” cruising off the coast started on September 7th for the transfer flight. On September 10th, Ramsbotton-Isherwood announced the operational readiness of his unit. The first six operational flights took place one day later.
commitment
The first encounter with German aircraft took place on September 12th. Five Hurricanes hit the same number of Bf 109s of Luftflotte 5 , which were flying fighter protection for an Hs-126 reconnaissance aircraft. In the ensuing battle, three Bf 109s were shot down and the British lost a hurricane. The pilot, Flight Sergeant N. H. Smith, was killed in the crash and was the first to fall in the squadron.
Until October 10th, the 151st Wing flew missions almost daily, either air patrols over the port of Murmansk, Kola and the naval base Polarnoje or escort protection for Soviet bombers who attacked German or Finnish airfields. On five days there were aerial battles in which the squadron shot down twelve Bf 109s, one Hs 126 and two Ju 88s . Most of the kills were achieved by the experienced pilots from the 81st Squadron, who had already been deployed in the Battle of Britain . The most successful pilot with three kills, C. Haw, also came from this unit.
From October 10 to October 21, 1941, the British pilots instructed Soviet pilots of the 72nd Mixed Aviation Regiment on the Hurricane. Individual pilots, including Boris Safonow , who was the squadron leader in the 72nd SAP at the time, flew the type from the end of September. The first Soviet squadron was operational from October 9th, and on October 25th the first Soviet aerial victory on this type was achieved against a Bf 110 .
After completing the pilot training, the British soldiers of the 81st Squadron ended their stay in the USSR in mid-November; the 134th Squadron had already been shipped to Great Britain at the end of October. With the arrival of the unit in Scapa Flow on December 6, 1941, Operation Benedict came to an end.
Trivia
On March 17, 1942, the pilots Boris Safonow, Ivan Tumanow, Alexander Kowalenko and Alexei Kucharenko were awarded the British Distinguished Flying Cross . Conversely, the commander Ramsbottom-Isherwood and the aviators A. Rook, A. Miller and C. Raw received the Order of Lenin . Before that, the commander of the naval forces of the northern fleet, Alexander Kuznetsov, had received a "personal" hurricane as a gift from the British pilots.
The hurricane in action
The 151st Wing flew only the Hurricane IIB, which was the first delivery of British lend-lease aircraft to the SU. A total of 2952 hurricanes went to the WWS. The Soviet pilots did not rate the type very well. He was classified as underarmed. Safonov had the Hurricanes of his squadron replace the twelve 7.7 mm Browning machine guns with two 20 mm SchWAK cannons and two 12.7 mm Beresin UB MGs, with which better results were achieved.
The Merlin-XX engine installed in the IIB turned out to be very prone to failure and a short lifespan due to the low temperatures of the Arctic Ocean, so that many hurricanes were canceled after a short time due to this fact and a lack of spare parts. The effect of the propeller blades was also considered to be insufficient; they were therefore replaced by others. On the other hand, the standard equipment of the aircraft with radio equipment was assessed positively, since this was not the rule in the Soviet air force at the time. Only about every third military aircraft had radio equipment.
literature
- Olaf Groehler : Partner in the North Sea . In: Aviator Calendar of the GDR 1988 . Military publishing house of the German Democratic Republic, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-327-00300-9 .
- Olaf Groehler: Air battles of the second world war: Air battles 1941/42 over the North Sea . In: Flieger-Jahrbuch 1977 . Transpress, Berlin 1976.
- Wilfried Copenhagen : Lexicon Soviet Aviation . Elbe – Dnjepr, Klitzschen 2007, ISBN 978-3-933395-90-0 .
- Hans-Joachim Mau: Under the Red Star - Lend-Lease Aircraft for the Soviet Union 1941-1945 . Transpress, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-344-70710-8 .
- Wilfried Copenhagen: Soviet fighters . Transpress, Berlin 1985.
- Who? When? What? In: Flieger Revue . No. 6 , 1988.
Web links
- RAF Hurricanes in Russia (Engl.)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Vladimir Kotelnikow: British Hurricanes in Soviet service. Cyclone in the north. In: Aviation Classics. No. 04/2014, pp. 24-27.