Customer Reviews

Petlyakov Pe-2 'Peshka'

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This is the best history of a Russian bomber in English that I have ever read. The engineering, combat experience, and political background of the most important World War II Soviet bomber are described in careful detail. An account of the Pe-2's post-war service in smaller nations illustrates Cold War expansion of Stalinism.

Using many translations of documents and memoirs once buried in secret Soviet archives, the author's large 208-page study has photos, drawings and data on the many variations developed by the engineers. The men and women that flew and built these bombers show the human side of warfare. The detailed account of Petlyakov's tragic and unnecessary death also describes the political persecution that often crippled Soviet aviation.

While the author sees how Stalin's evils caused enormous loss of life, responsibility for that plague must be shared with Hitler and the others that made World War II happen. The chapter on August Storm, when the USSR joined the war against Japan and regained territory lost in 1905 does not explore the complicated balance of American, Russian, and Soviet strategies that delayed Japanese Amy plans to seize eastern Siberia until it was too late to prevent the long-feared American-Russian vice to close in Japan.

Such massive data must contain translation and interpretation errors, but they are hard to detect, and the authords previous books on dive-bombers provide him with insights on aiming and deceleration problems-Ray Wagner San Diego Air and Space Museum