Estimated reading time: 12 minutes
I’ll just come out and say it—Vladimir Putin is a proper idiot.
I didn’t always feel this way. Back when President Obama was regularly photographed wearing those dorky bicycle helmets, Putin always seemed to be wrestling anacondas in outer space or some such. At the time, I longed for an American leader with perhaps a bit more serum testosterone. With the benefit of hindsight, I had no idea how good we had it. Nowadays, our Presidents tend to fall over when they go out for a bike ride and then stop to chat with reporters.
Table of contents
What clinched it for me was Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Now, admittedly, I have a couple of buddies who are fighting over there, so I’m hardly impartial. However, it is tough to believe that, even this deep into the enlightened Information Age, nations can yet still go to war simply because a single charismatic lunatic wants them to.
What a Mess
Putin thought he would be toasting his own strategic brilliance in Kiev three days after his battalion tactical groups roared across the frontier back in February of 2022. Now, some two and one-half years later, Ukrainian forces are making good progress on their counter-invasion of Russia. Old Vlad did not see that coming.
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Putin is rapidly running out of cards to play. He’s postured and blustered and threatened and screamed. However, along the way, he’s also burned through half a million Russian casualties. That’s a mind-boggling number. The butcher’s bill has become so astronomically high that he can no longer afford to quit. If he backs off even a little bit, some ambitious sycophant is going to defenestrate him (Toss him out of a window. That happens quite a lot over there). It seems he’s painted himself into a corner. He has no off-ramp.
The Desperate Rantings of a Desperate Despot
All he’s got left are nuclear threats. Maybe his antique nukes still actually work; maybe they don’t. Nobody is exactly waiting in line to test that out. However, it is the specious iconography of Russian heroes facing down Imperialist Yankee Americans that keeps his poor misguided people energized these days.
These Russians are monsters. Tens of thousands of dead and wounded Ukrainian civilians speak to this reality. The truly pathetic bit is that nobody over on our side of the pond cares. Most Americans couldn’t locate Ukraine on a map. Making the world safe for democracy was something our grandparents raised to an art form. By contrast, we’re fairly apathetic – we have our own problems. However, that was not always the case.
Back in November of 1944, Russians and Americans were allied together to rid the world of what was arguably history’s greatest geopolitical evil. However, one gargantuan misunderstanding blossomed out of control and soon had Russian and American fighter planes blowing the living crap out of each other in the bright blue skies above Niš, Yugoslavia. As word of Russians killing Americans and vice versa would not have done much for the war effort back home, the details were mostly suppressed. Now some eight decades later, they nonetheless remain fascinating.
The Fog of War
War is chaos. It always has been. Back in the days before the microchip, communications were sketchy at best. If they had radios at all, those of most tactical aircraft were as big as steamer trunks and only communicated on a handful of discrete frequencies. Given that they ran on vacuum tubes, these devices often failed unexpectedly as well. Mix in the fact that Russians don’t speak English and Americans don’t speak Russian, and you have the recipe for tragedy. That tragedy struck on 7 November 1944.
Anyone who has ever done any flying appreciates that everything looks different from above. Target identification is reliably difficult from the air, particularly when you are screaming along at treetop level and 400 miles per hour in the cockpit of a Lockheed P38 Lightning.
The Situation
On 6 November, an American P38 group led by Colonel C.T. “Curly” Edwinson rendered superlative service supporting the Soviet 6th Guards Rifle Corps in its advance against German forces. The Russians had been so impressed they had requested that the same unit provide air support the following day. However, they neglected to inform the American chain of command that they had advanced some 100 km overnight. Now Russian and German units were intermixed. The 6th Guards Rifle Corps was on the move between Niš and Belgrade when it was spotted by Colonel Edwinson’s roving group of P38s.
The War Plane
The big twin-engine P38 fighter represented the state-of-the-art in armed interceptors at the outset of WW2. By 1944, however, the Fork-Tailed Devil, as the Germans referred to it, was badly outclassed by more nimble single-engine types. As a result, Lightnings were often used for ground attack missions. The concentrated firepower of four M2 .50-caliber machineguns all clustered together alongside a single Hispano 20mm cannon in the nose was devastating against terrestrial targets like tanks, trains, and trucks.
By this point in the war, the inexorable push by the Americans, British, and Canadians in the west was bumping up against their Soviet counterparts moving in from the east. As all tanks looked pretty much the same from above at such high speeds, it was a reasonable thing that the Lightning jocks might accidentally mistake the Russian T34s for German Panzerkampfwagen Mk IVs, Vs, and VIs. When the lead P38 formation stumbled upon the lumbering armored column, they did what all good fighter pilots do—they rolled hot, guns a ‘blazing.
The Tragedy
The results were predictable. The Lightnings blew the dog snot out of the Soviet column, killing 31 Russian soldiers and wounding a further 37. The Corps commander, LTG Grigory Petrovich Kotov, died in the attack.
One of the reasons the Lightning was used for ground attack at this point in the war was that it had such a distinctive silhouette. Nothing else really looked quite like that from the ground. The Soviets did briefly mistake the attacking Lightnings for twin-boom German Fw-189 reconnaissance aircraft. However, as the Soviets did not care much for getting strafed, regardless of the nationality of the attacking machines, they got on the horn and scared up a few Russian Yak fighters.
The Yak-9 looks a bit like a German Messerschmitt Bf109 in dim light. Once the Russian fighters showed up on station there resulted a mighty scrap. The American Lightning pilots shot down a Yak before somebody noticed the red stars on the wings and threw water on the party. Realizing what they had done, the Lightnings formed a Lufbery Circle over the city of Niš to think things through.
Circular Reasoning
The Lufbery Circle was named after one Raoul Lufbery, the leading fighter ace of the Lafayette Escadrille in WW1. While Lufbery did not originate the maneuver, it did inexplicably become associated with his name. Some have speculated that this was because he helped train quite a few incoming pilots in the technique during the war.
A Lufbery Circle was simply a large horizontal circular formation wherein a group of fighters would follow one after another such that their weapons could cover the blind spots of the plane ahead of them. By orienting the formation above an enemy trench or ground target, the circle allowed repeated attacks without so much concern over aerial ambush while the attacking pilots were preoccupied. In this case, the American aviators just needed a few minutes to think.
War Gets You Going Too Fast Sometimes
The Yak pilots formed up low over the city and attacked the Lightnings from below. One P38 exploded in flames. The American pilots then began shooting back, red stars or not. Around that time, a further group of Soviet fighters showed up to join the fray.
This aerial melee went on for another quarter hour. However, fifteen minutes is a literal lifetime in air combat. When passions finally abated, two Lightnings and three Yaks had augured in. One of the Yaks had fallen to Soviet antiaircraft fire.
The Rest of the Story
Colonel Edwinson didn’t bother to tell anybody what happened for the next three days. Once the details became apparent, all involved felt frankly awful. Edwinson was quietly reassigned stateside but went on to make General, so apparently that turned out OK. The United States formally apologized for the incident, but the Soviets never quite forgave us. They always have been a suspicious lot.
The feeling was mutual. When finally the war was winding to a close, no less a luminary than General George Patton lobbied quietly to turn captured German formations eastward and take the fight on to the Russians. He could sense that we would be fighting eventually and felt we might as well just go ahead and get it on.
Half a century later, the Cold War finally ended. US and Warsaw Pact forces never quite got around to slugging it out in the Fulda Gap. That desperate fight over Yugoslavia back in 1944 represents the only instance of truly unfettered combat between our two nations. In February of 2018, American special operators pretty much slaughtered a Russian Wagner unit that attacked their FOB in Syria, but those were mercenaries. You can find the details here.
In retrospect, we are all clearly better off that nobody seriously listened to Patton back then. He died soon thereafter under suspicious circumstances anyway. Even today, conspiracy theorists believe he was offed by the Russians.
Ruminations On War
READ MORE: CPL Ben Roberts-Smith: Never Meet Your Heroes
The two biggest kids on the playground will always want to fight. Tragically, that’s who we are. To paraphrase the Terminator, it is in our nature to destroy ourselves. We can’t seem to help it.
Back in late 1944, the Germans were tooling up to launch Operation Watch on the Rhine, a little party we later came to refer to as the Battle of the Bulge. At the same time, a horrible misunderstanding unfolded in the skies above Yugoslavia. Good guys killed good guys, and the exchange left geopolitical scars that never quite healed. Now well into the 21st century, Vladimir Putin seems desperate to thump chests yet again. Let’s all just hope he falls out of some window someplace before he can get too carried away.
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Eisenhower, Montgomery, were just two of many that wanted nothing to do with a ground war in that meat grinder part of the world. But the numbnuts currently occupying D.C. Just know they know better. This is what happens when poly-si majors with no combat experience run things. Things go to shit and get worse from there. I remember the draft, I had a draft card but I enlisted. Americans take heed- do not send your sons and daughters to die for the Globalist Bankers. When that flag draped casket arrives with a placard on it “REMAINS NOT VIEWABLE” come back and tell us it was worth it.The Bankers are laughing all the way to the bank. Xin Loi
Considering the above comments, I have to disagree. Saying that Ukraine deserved to be invaded because it instigated Putin is a bit like saying a woman deserved to be raped because she dressed provocatively. He’s a brutal dictator who imprisons or executes all his rivals. Ukraine is a sovereign country that should determine its own fate and allies.
Ooooooh, I just knew the Putin humjobbers would show up to defend him, and condemn Ukraine. Say, did they call them Nazis while simultaneously condemning Zelensky as a jew? I’m not going to read all the comments. Nice job, Doc.
I love my country and like most Americans I like to think we are the good guys. I keep asking myself would we tolerate Russia setting up a satellite government in Mexico? Absolutely not and with good reason. This little war is costing us billions. We are being bankrupted and growing weaker everyday.
I normally let my minor disagreement with you lay low. However, this time I had to say something to challenge you. Honestly with all due respect, I have to disagree with you about Russia. The US and its allies have been slowly encroaching on Russia since the collapse of the former Soviet Union, despite reassurances all of this time that NATO would not do what it has continued to do for the last 30 years. Grow, grow and grow some more! We effectively surrounded Russia. If you will investigate Putin has been threatening the present war for years now with every new encroachment. Every time one of the old soviet satellites joined NATO Russia rattled the proverbial saber and nobody paid any attention. Ukraine’s applying for NATO membership after the duly elect leader ousted for Zalinsky to bring in NATO, that was the last straw. Now everyone is surprised that they finally struck back! Duh! NATOs slow encroachment instigated this mess, and the US and NATO has a lot of innocent Russian and Ukrainian blood on its hand. Bad mouthing Putin (Who I have never liked or trusted) doesn’t change any of this. AS usual my country right or wrong doesn’t pass the smell test. Of course, the media doesn’t report any of this. This war Russia’s Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse. For 30 years we have just kept poking the Russian bear and now we’re surprised the bear fought back. Has anyone bothered to check Putin’s popularity among the Russian people? Yes, I had to take exception with your opening in the article. the rest as usual I found interesting as always!
Lee, you are so spot on with your analysis on this attack by Russia, it was provoked by Ukraine and NATO, they are only to blame!
Could not agree more wholeheartedly. If you peel back the onion on this, who stands to gain? The Ukrainian oligarchs are getting richer on US taxpayer dollars. In one previous column DR Dabbs obfuscated the Ukrainian aid situation by pointing out that we may be giving them some stockpiled US supplies but I have a hard time imagining we can really afford to do that given the debacle with the Afghan “withdrawal”. Unfortunately, when Eisenhower warned us about the military industrial complex social media didn’t exist so now that speech is relegated to dusty textbooks. By the way, if anyone is interested enough to look, they will find that in the years following WW one the European powers steadily abused and encroached on Germany too. Not trying to say hitler was not a bad guy, just saying there is always more to the story because the media controls the story they want you to see, just like painting Putin as the devil.
I’m not going to war on behalf of the US government or its allies, whatever the pretext.
Another great history lesson Doc! As always, you have provided a wealth of knowledge with a bit of humor. Thank you and looking forward to you future endeavors!
Americans and Russians have fought before the incident in WWII. At the end of WWI, the US sent 5000 troops to aid the White Russians against the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution. Unfortunately, they were not successful, resulting in millions of Russians “purged” by Lenin and Stalin.
The US also intervened in the Russian Civil War, 1918-1919, on the side of the Allies against the Bolsheviks. Fought a number of pitched battles with the Bolshies in miserably undersupplied logistic conditions, issued with Russian rifles and temps as low as -50 Fahrenheit.
109 killed, 305 wounded; thirty-five died of wounds; eighty-one death from disease (ninety percent of which were caused by influenza); thirty missing in action; nineteen dead from accidents/other causes; and four were prisoners of war, with total casualties numbering 583. Obviously, we didn’t win.
Interesting that the Allied invasion took place at Archangel, where US-Murmansk convoys kept the same Bolshies supplied and in the war against the Axis. Just +20 years later….
Sorry, the blood soaked monsters in Washington DC started the Ukrainian civil war in 2014 by over throwing the democratically elected government and installing a US puppet regime (see Asst Sec of State Victoria Nuland leaked phone call). Sorry, if I was the leader of Russia I probably would have invaded Ukraine sooner. There is no way I would tolerate a hostile alliance and hostile nuclear weapons in a country that projects deep into my territory. The same as the fact that the US would not tolerate Chinese’s alliance or nuclear weapons in Cuba or Mexico. And for the record, democracy is the worst form of government ever invented. As a republic we should not be supporting democracies. Granted, Ukraine is a corrupt dictatorships (which usually follow democracies) so the point is a bit moot.