Full and comprehensive on the origins, design, construction and battle
record of the Petlyakov Pe-2 dive-bomber, the Peshka A-10A.
During the Second World War, the Soviet Union's Petlyakov Pe-2 Peshka
dive-bomber was unique in that it was as fast as most fighter aircraft.
This was in a period when it was considered by the RAF that it was
impossible for monoplane aircraft to conduct vertical bombing with any
degree of success.
During the war the Pe-2 was the principal dive- and light-bomber of
Russia's air power across the vast Eastern Front and it continued in
service until the early 1950s with the air forces of the Warsaw Pact
countries and Yugoslavia. Conceived by a team of top aircraft designers
whom Stalin had incarcerated in a prison camp on trumped-up political
charges, the Pe-2 had originally been designed as a high-altitude
twin-engine fighter plane, but, due to the outstanding success of the
German Stukas in the Blitzkrieg, its role was quickly changed to that of
a fast dive-bomber. The Pe-2 arrived in service around the time of the
German attack on its hitherto ally.
Although only a handful had reached front line units by the start of
Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, the Pe-2 soon became the main
dive-bomber in both the Soviet VVS and Naval service. Mass production,
by factories hastily moved back beyond the front, meant that numbers
increased rapidly, and more than 11,000 of the type, including many
variants, were built up to 1945. The Peshka became the mainstay of the
Soviet counteroffensive that ultimately resulted in the fall of Berlin.
Pe-2s also led the way in the brief but annihilating Manchurian campaign
against Japan in the closing days of the war in 1945.
Using official sources, including the official Pe-2 handbook, and
numerous color and black-and-white photographs made available to the
author from both official and private sources and collections, this book
is the definitive record of the Pe-2 - the dive-bomber supreme!
