Air Battles over the Baltic 1941 Volume 4: The Day of Reckoning, Afternoon Battles and Aftermath

The concluding volume of this four-part series brings the narrative of 22 June 1941 in the Baltic skies to its grim finale. After the destruction wrought by the dawn raids and morning battles, the Luftwaffe pressed home its advantage in the afternoon with a third and fourth wave of attacks. Soviet attempts to regroup and redeploy to secondary airfields were too little, too late. The result was the near-complete collapse of the Red Air Force in the Baltic within a single day.

Drawing on Soviet and German archival records, Mikhail Timin reconstructs the sequence of these later actions in detail. He examines how the Luftwaffe targeted dispersal airfields and continued to destroy Soviet aircraft on the ground, while Soviet pilots who managed to take off faced overwhelming odds in the air. The book analyses the desperate measures taken by Soviet commanders to salvage their forces, the shifting of surviving units to new bases, and the chaotic communications that prevented effective counter-action.

The volume also considers the overall outcome of the battle: the scale of Soviet losses, the survival of only a fraction of the original force, and the way these events shaped the air campaign in the weeks that followed. Appendices and statistical tables provide detailed data on losses, sorties, and unit movements, offering the most comprehensive reference available on this critical episode.

Illustrated with colour profiles, rare photographs, maps, and charts, this volume provides the definitive account of the afternoon battles and their consequences. It completes the first in-depth English-language history of the air war over the Baltic in 1941, showing how the Luftwaffe secured dominance and how the Red Air Force paid the price for unpreparedness and flawed command structures.