{"id":1333862,"date":"2026-05-30T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/soviet-aviation-propaganda-1940s\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T21:18:27","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T19:18:27","slug":"soviet-aviation-propaganda-1940s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/soviet-aviation-propaganda-1940s\/","title":{"rendered":"The 1940s: From Catastrophe to Berlin \u2014 Aviation in Soviet Propaganda Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style>\n<p>On 22 June 1941, at 03:15 Moscow time, the Luftwaffe attacked sixty-six Soviet airfields. Over 1,200 Soviet aircraft were destroyed in the first twelve hours of Operation Barbarossa, most of them parked, most of them unable to take off. The Soviet aviation propaganda apparatus \u2014 the apparatus that had spent the entire 1930s telling the country it had the most modern air force in the world \u2014 found itself, by lunchtime on a single summer Sunday, presiding over a catastrophe.<\/p>\n<p>The propaganda machinery did not stop. It changed register. Throughout the next four years of the Great Patriotic War, Soviet aviation propaganda would shift from the romantic pre-war pilot cult of Chkalov to the savage, vengeful, all-the-way-to-Berlin iconography of the Il-2 Shturmovik, the night-bomber Polikarpov U-2, the Yak-9 fighter and the air aces who flew them. By the time the red flag went up over the Reichstag on 30 April 1945, the Soviet Union had produced more aircraft than any other nation in the war except the United States \u2014 157,000 aircraft, some 125,000 of them combat types \u2014 and the propaganda told the story of that effort almost in real time.<\/p>\n<div style=\"background:#f5f5f5;padding:16px 20px;margin:18px 0 24px;border-radius:8px;font-size:15px;line-height:1.7\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:700;color:#333;font-size:16px\">Quick Facts<\/p><p style=\"margin:6px 0\"><strong>Period:<\/strong> Great Patriotic War (June 1941 \u2013 May 1945)<\/p><p style=\"margin:6px 0\"><strong>Top Soviet ace:<\/strong> Ivan Kozhedub \u2014 64 confirmed kills, 3\u00d7 Hero of the Soviet Union<\/p><p style=\"margin:6px 0\"><strong>Second:<\/strong> Alexander Pokryshkin \u2014 59 confirmed kills, 3\u00d7 Hero of the Soviet Union<\/p><p style=\"margin:6px 0\"><strong>Most-produced combat aircraft in history:<\/strong> Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovik (36,183 built)<\/p><p style=\"margin:6px 0\"><strong>Three all-female aviation regiments:<\/strong> 586th IAP (Yak fighters) \u00b7 587th BAP (Pe-2 bombers) \u00b7 588th NBAP (Po-2 night bombers)<\/p><p style=\"margin:6px 0\"><strong>&#8220;Night Witches&#8221; (Nachthexen):<\/strong> German Wehrmacht nickname for the 588th<\/p><\/div>\n\n<div style=\"display:flex;gap:14px;flex-wrap:wrap;justify-content:center;margin:18px 0 26px\"><figure style=\"flex:1 1 200px;max-width:31%;margin:0\"><img data-opt-id=1936595388  fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/05\/soviet-stamp-1960-wwii-pilot-hero-cpa-2401.jpg\" alt=\"1960 Soviet WW2 pilot hero stamp\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;border-radius:6px;border:1px solid #ddd\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:12px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:4px;font-style:italic;line-height:1.4\">USSR 1960 (CPA 2401) \u2014 WWII Hero Lieutenant Timur Frunze and an air battle. The post-war stamp programme made wartime aviators saints of the state.<\/figcaption><\/figure><figure style=\"flex:1 1 200px;max-width:31%;margin:0\"><img data-opt-id=707683843  fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/05\/soviet-stamp-gritsevets-1969-cpa-3800.png\" alt=\"Soviet Gritsevets stamp\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;border-radius:6px;border:1px solid #ddd\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:12px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:4px;font-style:italic;line-height:1.4\">USSR 1969 (CPA 3723) \u2014 Sergei Gritsevets, killed in 1939, beatified by the propaganda apparatus for the next half-century.<\/figcaption><\/figure><figure style=\"flex:1 1 200px;max-width:31%;margin:0\"><img data-opt-id=395901795  data-opt-src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/05\/soviet-stamp-deyneka-defense-sevastopol-1942-cpa-3709.jpg\"  decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20viewBox%3D%220%200%20100%%20100%%22%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20fill%3D%22transparent%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E\" alt=\"1968 Deyneka Defense of Sevastopol stamp\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;border-radius:6px;border:1px solid #ddd\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:12px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:4px;font-style:italic;line-height:1.4\">USSR 1968 (CPA 3709) \u2014 Aleksandr Deyneka&#8217;s 1942 painting &#8220;The Defense of Sevastopol&#8221; reissued as a stamp. Deyneka&#8217;s aviation-and-naval imagery was central to wartime propaganda.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">From Chkalov to the Shturmovik<\/h2>\n<p>The pre-war pilot cult \u2014 Chkalov, Gromov, the Rodina crew \u2014 had been about peacetime aviation as a symbol of socialist achievement. The war changed the unit of analysis. After 22 June 1941 the propaganda apparatus stopped celebrating individual pilots and started celebrating individual aircraft.<\/p>\n<p>The Il-2 Shturmovik became the symbol. Designed by Sergei Ilyushin as a heavily armoured ground-attack aircraft \u2014 its forward cockpit and engine compartment sat inside a roughly 700 kg steel-armoured bathtub that protected it against rifle-calibre fire and shrapnel \u2014 the Il-2 was the workhorse that destroyed the German tank columns on the Eastern Front. By 1944 the Soviet aviation industry was completing a new aircraft roughly every fifteen minutes \u2014 and no type rolled off the lines in greater numbers than the Il-2. Stalin himself, in a famous December 1941 telegram berating lagging factory directors, wrote that the Il-2 was needed by the Red Army &#8220;like air, like bread.&#8221;<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px\"><img data-opt-id=1350473995  data-opt-src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/05\/il-2-shturmovik-soviet-propaganda-flying-tank.jpg\"  decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20viewBox%3D%220%200%20100%%20100%%22%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20fill%3D%22transparent%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E\" alt=\"Il-2 Shturmovik in formation\" style=\"max-width:100%;height:auto;border-radius:6px\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovik ground-attack aircraft. The propaganda nickname was the &#8220;flying tank.&#8221; The aircraft was produced in larger numbers than any other combat aircraft in history. Photo: Wikimedia Commons (public domain)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The propaganda image of the Il-2 was specifically classed \u2014 it was the aircraft of the worker, the peasant, the proletarian air force, in stark contrast to the gentleman-aviator imagery of Luftwaffe Messerschmitts. Soviet posters of 1943 and 1944 routinely showed Il-2s in low-level formation over burning German Tiger tanks. The accompanying slogans \u2014 &#8220;Smert\u2019 fashistskim okkupantam!&#8221; (Death to the fascist occupiers!) \u2014 were not metaphorical. Soviet wartime accounts credited the air force \u2014 and the Il-2 above all \u2014 with destroying tens of thousands of German aircraft, tanks and vehicles; the figures were unverifiable, but the propaganda treated them as fact.<\/p>\n\n<div style=\"display:flex;gap:14px;flex-wrap:wrap;justify-content:center;margin:18px 0 26px\"><figure style=\"flex:1 1 200px;max-width:48%;margin:0\"><img data-opt-id=655616414  data-opt-src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/05\/toidze-1943-bogatyri-forward-poster.jpg\"  decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20viewBox%3D%220%200%20100%%20100%%22%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20fill%3D%22transparent%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E\" alt=\"Toidze 1943\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;border-radius:6px;border:1px solid #ddd\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:12px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:4px;font-style:italic;line-height:1.4\">Irakli Toidze, &#8220;\u0412\u043e \u0438\u043c\u044f \u0420\u043e\u0434\u0438\u043d\u044b \u2014 \u0432\u043f\u0435\u0440\u0451\u0434, \u0431\u043e\u0433\u0430\u0442\u044b\u0440\u0438!&#8221; \u2014 &#8220;In the name of the Motherland \u2014 forward, bogatyri!&#8221; (1943). Toidze, fresh off the 1941 &#8220;Motherland Calling&#8221; poster, applied the same compositional formula to Soviet aviation. The bogatyr (mythic Russian knight) became the Soviet pilot.<\/figcaption><\/figure><figure style=\"flex:1 1 200px;max-width:48%;margin:0\"><img data-opt-id=781682359  data-opt-src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/05\/toidze-1944-i-swear-to-defeat-the-enemy.jpg\"  decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20viewBox%3D%220%200%20100%%20100%%22%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20fill%3D%22transparent%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E\" alt=\"Toidze 1944\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;border-radius:6px;border:1px solid #ddd\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:12px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:4px;font-style:italic;line-height:1.4\">Irakli Toidze, &#8220;\u041a\u043b\u044f\u043d\u0443\u0441\u044c \u043f\u043e\u0431\u0435\u0434\u0438\u0442\u044c \u0432\u0440\u0430\u0433\u0430!&#8221; \u2014 &#8220;I swear to defeat the enemy!&#8221; (1943). The Il-2 Shturmovik in the background frames the pilot as the inheritor of the Patriotic War tradition. Published by Iskusstvo in a print run of 150,000 copies.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The aces<\/h2>\n<p>Soviet propaganda&#8217;s other big shift was its discovery, in 1943, that individual air aces sold. The Pokryshkin and Kozhedub propaganda campaigns of 1943\u20131945 were direct successors to the Chkalov cult of the 1930s, updated for wartime. Alexander Pokryshkin \u2014 59 confirmed kills, the great majority of them in a Lend-Lease P-39 Airacobra \u2014 was made a three-time Hero of the Soviet Union, the first soldier in the war to receive the title three times.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px\"><img data-opt-id=17771811  data-opt-src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/05\/alexander-pokryshkin-soviet-ace-1944.jpg\"  decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20viewBox%3D%220%200%20100%%20100%%22%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20fill%3D%22transparent%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E\" alt=\"Alexander Pokryshkin\" style=\"max-width:100%;height:auto;border-radius:6px\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">Alexander Pokryshkin, the highest-decorated Soviet pilot of the war and a three-time Hero of the Soviet Union. His tactical aphorism \u2014 &#8220;Height, speed, manoeuvre, fire&#8221; \u2014 became propaganda doctrine for the entire VVS. Photo: Wikimedia Commons (public domain)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Ivan Kozhedub matched him through 64 confirmed kills in La-5 and La-7 fighters by VE Day \u2014 and in August 1945 became a three-time Hero himself. Both men were on Pravda&#8217;s front page repeatedly. Both became household names before the war ended. Both were used by the Soviet propaganda apparatus to do precisely what the 1930s pilot cult had done: model an ideal of the Soviet citizen \u2014 courageous, technically modern, politically obedient and personally heroic \u2014 for the entire population to internalise.<\/p>\n\n<div style=\"display:flex;gap:14px;flex-wrap:wrap;justify-content:center;margin:18px 0 26px\"><figure style=\"flex:1 1 200px;max-width:48%;margin:0\"><img data-opt-id=1629225083  data-opt-src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/05\/soviet-poster-zaletov-1941-aviation-great-patriotic-war-1.jpg\"  decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20viewBox%3D%220%200%20100%%20100%%22%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20fill%3D%22transparent%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E\" alt=\"Zaletov 1941 aviation poster\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;border-radius:6px;border:1px solid #ddd\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:12px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:4px;font-style:italic;line-height:1.4\"><strong>Soviet aviation poster, 1941<\/strong> \u2014 from the opening months of the Great Patriotic War, when aviation became the visual emblem of socialist labour mobilised for combat.<\/figcaption><\/figure><figure style=\"flex:1 1 200px;max-width:48%;margin:0\"><img data-opt-id=1058664612  data-opt-src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/05\/soviet-poster-taran-weapon-of-heroes-aerial-ramming-1.jpg\"  decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20viewBox%3D%220%200%20100%%20100%%22%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20fill%3D%22transparent%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E\" alt=\"Soviet aerial ramming poster\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;border-radius:6px;border:1px solid #ddd\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:12px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:4px;font-style:italic;line-height:1.4\"><strong>&#8220;\u0422\u0430\u0440\u0430\u043d \u2014 \u043e\u0440\u0443\u0436\u0438\u0435 \u0433\u0435\u0440\u043e\u0435\u0432!&#8221; \u2014 &#8220;Ramming is a weapon of heroes!&#8221;<\/strong> Soviet wartime poster celebrating <em>taran<\/em>, the deliberate aerial ramming tactic. Hundreds of Soviet pilots used it as a last-resort kill technique against German bombers. The poster turned it into doctrine.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The women who flew at night<\/h2>\n<p>The most enduring single propaganda story of the wartime decade did not involve either of the aces. It involved Marina Raskova \u2014 the navigator from the 1938 Rodina flight \u2014 and the three all-female aviation regiments she organised after personally lobbying Stalin in October 1941. The 588th Night Bomber Aviation Regiment, equipped with Polikarpov Po-2 biplane trainers, became, by 1943, the most famous all-female military unit in the world.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px\"><img data-opt-id=1638779908  data-opt-src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/05\/night-witches-588th-46th-soviet-women-pilots-1943.jpg\"  decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20viewBox%3D%220%200%20100%%20100%%22%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%3E%3Crect%20width%3D%22100%%22%20height%3D%22100%%22%20fill%3D%22transparent%22%2F%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E\" alt=\"Pilots of the 46th Guards Night Bomber Regiment\" style=\"max-width:100%;height:auto;border-radius:6px\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">Pilots Khiwaz Dospanova and Yevgeniya Zhigulenko of the 46th Guards Night Bomber Regiment \u2014 the renamed 588th \u2014 in 1943. Their Po-2 biplanes flew over 23,000 night sorties against German positions. The Wehrmacht called them &#8220;Night Witches.&#8221; Photo: Russian State Archive \/ Wikimedia Commons (public domain)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The 588th flew the Polikarpov Po-2 \u2014 a wood-and-canvas open-cockpit biplane trainer that the propaganda machine never tired of pointing out was the same aircraft on which the women had learned to fly before the war. The aircraft was slow enough that German fighter aces sometimes overshot it. It was light enough that the women glided in over German positions with their engines idling, listened for the rustle of canvas in the slipstream that gave the unit its German nickname, and released their bombs on the camp below before the Germans had time to fire a flare.<\/p>\n<p>The 588th \u2014 renamed the 46th Taman Guards Night Bomber Regiment in 1943 \u2014 flew over 23,000 individual combat sorties between 1942 and 1945. Twenty-three of its pilots were made Heroes of the Soviet Union. The post-war Soviet propaganda apparatus made the 588th the central image of the women-in-the-war narrative: the regiment became a fixture of post-war Soviet histories, films and schoolbooks.<\/p>\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #d32f2f;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;border-radius:0 8px 8px 0;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;The Germans made up stories. They spread the rumour that we had been injected with some unknown chemicals that enabled us to see so clearly at night.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Nadezhda Popova<\/strong> &mdash; Pilot, 588th Night Bomber Aviation Regiment (BBC interview, 2009)<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The propaganda after the war<\/h2>\n<p>By VE Day the Soviet aviation propaganda apparatus had produced a vast body of wartime aviation posters, dozens of feature films and newsreels, and an unmeasured quantity of poems, songs, paintings and statues. The propaganda did the things it was built to do: it built morale, it framed sacrifice, it shaped the public understanding of the war&#8217;s progress and outcome, and it told the country what kind of citizens its leaders wanted it to be.<\/p>\n<p>The late 1940s saw the propaganda machinery do one more thing. It used the wartime aviation experience to begin selling the Soviet population on the next aircraft generation \u2014 the MiG-15 jet fighter, the Tu-4 strategic bomber copied from the B-29, the Il-28 jet bomber. The Cold War aviation propaganda of the 1950s \u2014 the next piece in this series \u2014 was built on the foundation the wartime propaganda had laid.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed\" style=\"margin:0 0 28px\"><div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mKd2_GGtNRw\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0;border-radius:6px\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">Night Witches \u2014 Sabaton History episode 50. Detailed reconstruction of how the 588th Regiment operated, with period photography and combat-report excerpts.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>One last note. The Aviamarsh anthem, which had been written in 1923 as a peacetime anthem about Soviet aviation, remained the marching song of Soviet aviation throughout the war. Marina Raskova, who organised the three all-female regiments and who died in a flight accident in January 1943 before her regiment finished its first year of combat, was buried with full state honours in the Kremlin Wall. She received the first state funeral of the war \u2014 and the old Aviamarsh refrain made a fitting epitaph: <em>Vyshe, i vyshe, i vyshe<\/em>. Higher, and higher, and higher.<\/p>\n<p><em>Sources: Scott W. Palmer, &#8220;Dictatorship of the Air&#8221;; Reina Pennington, &#8220;Wings, Women &#038; War: Soviet Airwomen in World War II Combat&#8221; (University Press of Kansas, 2001); Daily Telegraph (Nadezhda Popova obituary, 2013); the Wikipedia entries on Alexander Pokryshkin, Ivan Kozhedub, the 588th NBAP, and the Il-2 Shturmovik.<\/em><\/p>\n<div style=\"background:#f0f4ff;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:16px 20px;margin:32px 0 8px;border-radius:0 8px 8px 0\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600;color:#333\">Aviation in Soviet Propaganda \u2014 Series Index<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\">\u2192 <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/soviet-aviation-propaganda-overview\/\">Series Overview<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\">\u2192 <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/soviet-aviation-propaganda-1930s\/\">The 1930s: Stalin&#8217;s Falcons<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0;color:#888\">\u2192 <strong>The 1940s: The Great Patriotic War<\/strong> (you are here)<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\">\u2192 <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/soviet-aviation-propaganda-1950s\/\">The 1950s: Jets and Sputnik<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\">\u2192 <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/soviet-aviation-propaganda-1960s\/\">The 1960s: The Cult of the Cosmonaut<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\">\u2192 <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/soviet-aviation-propaganda-1970s\/\">The 1970s: The Routine Cosmonaut<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\">\u2192 <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/soviet-aviation-propaganda-1980s\/\">The 1980s: Mir and Buran<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\">\u2192 <a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/soviet-aviation-propaganda-1990s\/\">The 1990s: The Last Soviet Cosmonaut<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On 22 June 1941, at 03:15 Moscow time, the Luftwaffe attacked sixty-six Soviet airfields. Over 1,200 Soviet aircraft were destroyed in the first twelve hours of Operation Barbarossa, most of them parked, most of them unable to take off. The Soviet aviation propaganda apparatus \u2014 the apparatus that had spent the entire 1930s telling the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":1333751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[666,664],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1333862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history-and-legends","category-military-aviation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The 1940s: From Catastrophe to Berlin \u2014 Aviation in Soviet Propaganda Part 2 | MiGFlug.com Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"On 22 June 1941, at 03:15 Moscow time, the Luftwaffe attacked sixty-six Soviet airfields. 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