“Only “old men” go into battle - alas, in life everything was much worse than in this great film. After the defeat of Soviet aviation in the summer of 1941, when the Nazis seized complete air supremacy, and our air regiments burned to the ground in a matter of weeks, after severe defeats and catastrophic losses, the fallen were replaced by college graduates who had a total flight time of less than 20 hours, who had almost no there was a chance to become “old people”. How they resisted the Luftwaffe aces, at what cost they turned the tide in order to eventually become masters of the sky, only the “Stalinist falcons” themselves know. But although no one would dare call them “suicide bombers” or insult them with comparisons with kamikazes, among those who received baptism of fire in 1941–1942, only a few lived to see the Victory. In the NEW BOOK of a leading military historian you will see the Great Patriotic War from the cockpit of a Soviet fighter - how many kilograms the pilot lost in each combat mission and what obscenities were on the air during the battle; how your heart skips a beat after the command “COVER, ATTACK!” and darkens in the eyes from overload at the exit from the attack; What’s worse – to fight “on the verticals” with “Messers” and “Foreks”, to break the formation of German bombers bristling with barrage fire, or to cover “pawns” and “hunchbacks” climbing into the thick of it; what it’s like to burn in a damaged car and make a forced belly landing; how the “Stalinist falcons” lived, died and won – and what price was paid for each victorious star on the fuselage...