"Swastika in the gunsight" by Igor Kaberov

Igor Kaberov was a fighter pilot in the Russian Baltic Fleet Air Force before, during and after the Siege of Leningrad, and became a Hero of the Soviet Union. This little book is his personal memoirs, written up from his diaries and published in 1975. I was quite impressed by the professionalism of the Russian airmen, implicit in his description of daily life on a fighter station. When the Facists invaded, the fighter station was dispersed, dug in and camouflaged; no phony war for them. No lack of heroism under the Russians: it seems to be quite in order to fly into the fire of a Me 109, if you can save your comrade, or to get outnumbered into a dogfight to distract the Facist attention from a nearby formation. Russian technology seems to have been a trifle crude, but the main problem with the defence seems to be that the Russians were simply outnumbered, by tanks on the ground and aircraft in the air.