• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Comrade Stalin sent a telegram to Kuibyshev to the directors of the factories M.B.Shenkman and A.T.Tretyakov.
“You have let down our country and our Red Army. You have the nerve not to manufacture Il-2s until now. Our Red Army now needs Il-2 aircraft like the air it breathes, like the bread it eats. (This plant) now produces one Il-2 a day…. It is a mockery of the Red Army…. I ask you not to try the government’s patience, and demand that you manufacture more Il-2s. This is my final warning. Stalin.”

Aircraft Production - Great Patriotic War

Aircraft Production
Type	total	from	to
1921-8 - New Economic Policy [NEP] excludes a few German designs
P-IV-bis	50	1921	1923
U-1	772	1922	1931
R-1, R-2	2751	1924	1932
U-9	33	1922	1923
M-24	34	1923	1924
I-1	14	1926	1927
I-2	140	1926	1929
R-3	203	1926	1929
1928-1933 - First 5-Year Plan
I-3	352	1929	1931
TB-1	215	1929	1932
I-4	177	1929	1931
K-4	39	1928	1930
U-2 / Po-2	32528	1930	1949
FS-9/PS-9	66	1930	1932
P-2	28	1930	1931
I-5	813	1930	1934
K-5	256	1930	1934
R-6, MR-6	406	1931	1936
Tsh-2	10	1931	1932
R-5, P-5	6268	1931	1937
I-7	62	1931	1933
MBR-4	51	1932	1933
TB-3	819	1932	1938
ASh	270	1932	1934
AIR-6	128	1932	1936
1933-1937 - Second 5-Year Plan
I-Z	71	1933	1935
I-15	3062	1934	1939
I-16	10281	1934	1942
NIAI-1	20	1934	1934
MBR-2	1360	1934	1940
KAI-1	41	1934	1937
Steel-2	101	1934	1935
Steel-3	81	1935	1936
I-14	18	1936	1937
AI-6	222	1936	1938
IP-1	90	1936	1937
DB-1	18	1937	1936
SB	6280	1936	1941
MDR-4 / MTB-1	15	1936	1937
UT-1	1256	1937	1940
PS-89	7	1937	1938
SAM-5	37	1937	1938
DB-3	1528	1937	1941
R-10	490	1937	1940
PS-35	11	1938	1939
BSh-1	36	1938	1938
UT-2	7244	1938	1948
1938-1941 - Third 5-Year Plan
I-153	3437	1939	1945
KOR-1 / Be-2	12	1939	1940
DB-A	4	1939	1939
PS-84 / Li-2	4960	1939	1953
GST / MP-7	22	1939	1940
TB-7	89	1940	1944
Ar-2	267	1940	1941
MiG-3	3278	1940	1943
Yak-1	8721	1940	1944
Su-2	893	1940	1942
Yak-2 / -4		1940	1941
Pe-2 / -3	11425	1940	1945
DB-3F	5417	1940	1946
UT-3	14	1940	1940
MDR-6	42	1940	1942
LaGG-3	6528	1941	1944
Yak-7	6399	1941	1944
Yer-2 / DB-240	462	1941	1945
Il-2	36479	1941	1945
KOR-2 / Be-4	49	1941	1944
La-5	10002	1942	1944
Yak-6	381	1942	1943
Yak-9	16769	1942	1948
Tu-2	2525	1942	1952
La-7	6303	1944	1947
Yak-3	4848	1944	1946
Il-10	4908	1944	1954
Sche-2	567	1944	1946

Type	total
Ilyushin Il-2	36,183
Polikarpov Po-2 / I-2	33,000
Yakovlev Yak-9	16,769
Petlyakov Pe-2	11,427
Lavochkin La-5	9,920
Yakovlev Yak-1	8,720
Polikarpov I-16	8,644
Polikarpov UT-2	7,323
Tupolev SB	6,656
Yakovlev Yak-7	6,399
Lavochkin LaGG-3	6,258
Polikarpov R-5	6,000
Lavochkin La-7	5,753
Ilyushin DB-3 / Il-4	5,256
Ilyushin Il-10	4,966
Yakovlev Yak-3	4,848
MiG-3	3,178
Tupolev Tu-2	2,527
Beriev MBR-2	1,365
Yakovlev UT-1	1,200
TB-3	818
KAI R-10	490
Yer-2 / DB-240	462
TB-7 / Pe-8	93
TOTAL	187,765

Aircraft Production
1939	10,382
1940	10,565
1941	15,737
1942	25,436
1943	34,900
1944	40,300
1945	20,900
Total	158,218

The most difficult situation was in the most complex knowledge-intensive industries - engine building, instrument making, radio electronics. The Soviet Union could not overcome the backwardness of the West in these areas in the prewar and war years. Too great was the difference in the "starting conditions" and too short a period, given the history. They were unable to establish during the war years the serial production of turbochargers and two-stage superchargers.

No less serious restrictions made it necessary to use wood, plywood and steel pipes instead of scarce aluminum and magnesium alloys. The overwhelming severity of the wooden and mixed construction forced the Soviets to weaken weapons, limit ammunition, reduce fuel and save on armored protection. Nevertheless, the progress of Soviet aircraft building in complex war years is undeniable.

The task of increasing the amount of aluminum used in the USSR was without a doubt a priority and had, without exaggeration, a strategic significance. Aluminum must be evaluated first and foremost as the most important strategic raw material, necessary primarily for aircraft construction. It was the presence of aluminum in many ways that determined and limited the capacity of aircraft production. Aluminum was actively consumed by other industries, but, undoubtedly, the aviation industry was one of its most active consumers.

Despite the fact that aluminum smelting rose from 15,000 tons in 1936 to 34,000 tons in 1939, "the use of aluminum to replace copper and tin, as well as the widespread use of light alloys in aviation, that at the beginning of the war, no less than 60,000 tons of aluminum were required per year, that is, almost twice as much as was produced at that time," noted historian G.S. Filatov.

Type	to 22 Jun 1941	1942	1943	1944	to 09 May 1945	Total
Fighters	3941	9490	14275	16346	6635	50687
Stormtroopers	1061	7634	11254	10297	3664	33930
Bombers	1891	2578	2672	3165	1597	11903
TOTAL (less Po-2)	6893	19722	28201	29808	11896	96520
Po-2 (trainer)	1009	2130	2812	4382	1585	11918

By late 1944 the Germans were drowning in a flood of Soviet aircraft. The average monthly production of aircraft rose from 2.1 thousand in 1942 to 2.9 thousand in 1943. In total, in 1943, the industry produced 35,000 aircraft 37 percent more than in 1942. In 1943, the factories produced 49 thousand engines, almost 11 thousand more than in 1942. As early as 1942, the USSR surpassed Germany in the production of aircraft. The aircraft industry of the USSR produced 15,735 aircraft in 1941. In 1942, in the conditions of evacuation of aviation enterprises, 25,436 aircraft were produced, in 1943 - 34,900 aircraft, for 1944 - 40,300 aircraft, in the first half of 1945, 20,900 aircraft were produced.

Even after eight decades there is no consensus on the extent of Soviet losses in the first days of the war. By October 1941, the Wehrmacht armies approached Moscow, cities were occupied, supplying components for aircraft factories, it was time to evacuate factories and Sukhoi, Yakovlev and others in Moscow, Ilyushin in Voronezh, demanding the evacuation of all factories in the European part of the USSR. The Soviets were able to move much of their aircraft industry eastward out of German range during the summer and fall of 1941, By mid-1942 the planes were again coming off the production lines.

With the beginning of hostilities, Soviet aircraft construction had many experimental designs in developing new types of aircraft for assault aviation.

Marshal Georgi Zukov recollected: "From archive data in the period 1 January 1939 to 22 June 1941 the Red Army acquired 17,745 combat aircraft, 3,719 new type planes. Before the war, old aircraft were in the majority. Approximately 50-80% of these aircraft performed inferior to the same types of German aircraft. At the start of the war the breakdown of the types of aircraft was: bombardment air regiment - 45%; fighter air regiments - 42%; assault, intelligence and other air regiments – 13%. Only a few regiments received intense training and no more than 15% of pilots practiced night flying. Throughout the war the VVS went through a period of wide reorganization and equipment upgrades."

During the long and arduous war with Germany, the Soviet Air Force had evolved as a kind of flying artillery, linked organically to the army, and deployed for cooperative interaction with the ground forces. To perfect this role, the Soviet aircraft industry had been mobilized to manufacture vast numbers of tactical aircraft. Because of this wartime emergency, four-engine, long-range bombers were not produced, except for a small number of Pe 8s (only 79-93 built). By contrast, Soviet aviation plants manufactured over 36,000 Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmoviks.

There is something of a jumble as to the numbers on Soviet aircraft production during the war period - the total number was surely greater than 100,000, but probably less than 200,000. By one account, by 1940 the industry was turning out around 7,000 planes a year, but another erport places the total at nearly 11,000 per year. One evident source of ambiguity is whether the totals are only combat aircraft, or military aircraft of all types, including trainers and other auxiliaries, which were quite numerous. The definitive answer to this question was probably provided by the 2011 publication, The history of the domestic aircraft industry. Serial aircraft construction 1910-2010

During the Great Patriotic War, the famous Yak-7, Yak-9 and Yak-3 fighters were created, which together with the Yak-1 accounted for about 60% (over 36 thousand copies) of the Red Army Air Force fighters and were among the best aircraft of their own class. They were distinguished by an optimal combination of speed, armament and maneuverability and played an important role in defeating the Luftwaffe. By another account, In total, during the war years they were built more than 23 thousand, that is, almost a third of all aircraft that fought on the Soviet-German front. The remaining two-thirds consisted of fighters of more than ten types, including foreign ones.

The generalized linear model and particularly the logistic model are widely used in diverse fields. Suffice to say it looks like a smooth curve that ramps up quickly at one end, but then levels off in a long, asymptotic approach toward its maximum value on the far end. The theory of the Long Tail is that the modern digital culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. At one time Google made most of its money off small advertisers (the long tail of advertising), and eBay is mostly long tail as well - niche and one-off products.

Goodness-of-fit tests for these models are popularly used to describe how well a proposed model fits a set of observations. In data analysis in many fields, the logistic regression model or another generalized linear model are the most widely-used statistical modeling methodologies. The logistic regression model was originally developed when the large observational studies began to mature. More recently, it has been used extensively in the medical and social sciences as well as marketing applications such as prediction of a customer’s propensity to purchase a product or cease a subscription.

A generalized version of the inverse tangent function is devised and found to yield a decent enough fit to the top 15 aircraft produced during the Great Patriotic War epoch - a cumulative total of about 150,000 reported and predicted. The decline of a logistic curve gradually trails of into a "long tail". Production data on less popular aircraft are rather hard to come by. But the logistic curve predicts that the most popular 50 Soviet aircraft during this period would have a total aggregate prodcution run of 200,000 aircraft, which is probably outside the bounds of reported production.

Soviet aircraft production during the Great Patriotic War probably had a bimodal distribution, with a relative small number of models [no more than two dozen or so] producted in the thousands, with hundreds of other designs proceeding no further than small numbers of prototypes.