Service during Second World War Preparations for creation of the air defence forces started in 1932, and by the beginning of
Operation Barbarossa, June 1941, there were 13 PVO zones within the
military districts. At the outbreak of war, air defence forces were in the midst of rearmament. Anti-aircraft artillery teams had few of the latest 37 mm automatic and 85 mm guns. Moreover, the troops were deficient in Yak-1s and MiG-3s; 46 percent of the fleet were obsolete aircraft. Increased rates of production were initiated to provide the troops with new equipment. In July 1941, the National Defence Committee took several measures to strengthen the forces guarding Moscow and Leningrad, Yaroslavl and Gorky industrial areas, and strategic bridges across the Volga. To this end, the formation of parts of the IA, IN, anti-aircraft machine gun and searchlight units were accelerated. A classic example of a major political organization of defence and industrial center was the defence of Moscow. It was carried out by the
1st Air Defence Corps and the
6th Fighter Aviation Corps PVO. As part of these formations at the beginning of German air raids had more than 600 fighters; more than 1,000 guns of small and medium calibers; 350 machine guns; 124 fixed anti-aircraft barrage balloons; 612 stations and 600 anti-aircraft searchlights. The presence of such large forces and their skilful management foiled enemy attempts to inflict massive air strikes. Only 2.6 percent of the total number of Axis aircraft flew in the outskirts of Moscow as a result of their efforts. Air defence forces defending Moscow destroyed 738 enemy aircraft. Assaults by the 6th Fighter Aviation Corps inflicted heavy blows, destroying 567 enemy aircraft on the ground. The Air Defence Forces destroyed 1,305 aircraft and in combat with the armies of Nazi Germany and its allies, alongside the Air Force, destroyed 450 tanks and 5,000 military vehicles. . USSR, Leningrad. On November 9, 1941, the post of the Commander of the Air Defence Forces was created and
Major General Mikhail Gromadin was appointed. In January 1942, to improve the interaction of forces and air defence systems, the fighter aircraft and crews manning them were ordered to be subordinated to the Air Defence Command. In April 1942, the
Moscow Air Defence Front was founded, and the
Leningrad and
Baku Air Defence Armies were later raised. These were the first operational formations of the Air Defence Forces. In June 1943, the Office of the Commander of Air Defence Forces of the country was disbanded. Following the reorganization in April 1944 that created the
Western and
Eastern Air Defence Fronts, and caused the division of the Transcaucasian Air Defence Area, which this year have been reorganized as the North, the South and the Transcaucasian Air Defence Fronts, air defence forces in the vicinity of Moscow were renamed the
Moscow Air Defence Army. In the Far East in March 1945, three air defence armies were established: Maritime, Amur and Baikal. During the Second World War, the Air Defence Forces provided defensive cover to defense industry complexes and vital communication elements, and successfully minimized aerial damage to Soviet industrial and transportation capacity. In the course of the war, the PVO destroyed 7,313 German aircraft, of which 4,168 and 3,145 were targeted by the IA antiaircraft artillery, machine guns and barrage balloons. More than 80,000 soldiers, sergeants, officers and generals of the Country Air Defence Forces were awarded state orders and medals, and 92 soldiers were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union and one was twice awarded the Gold Star Medal in service with the PVO.
Structure during Second World War During the war PVO formations were organised as Air Defence Fronts and Air Defence Armies. PVO Fronts normally covered airspace over several ground
Army Fronts; these should not be confused with each other. The Air Defence Fronts () had the following service history: • Western Air Defence Front • 1st formation 29 June 1943 – 20 April 1944 renamed to Headquarters, Northern PVO Front • Northern Front PVO 21 April 1944 – 23 December 1944 formed from Headquarters, Western PVO Front (1st formation); re-flagged as Headquarters, Western PVO Front (2nd formation) • 2nd formation 24 December 1944 – 9 May 1945 formed from Headquarters, Northern PVO Front • Moscow Front PVO 6 April 1942 – 10 July 1943 formed from Headquarters, Moscow PVO Corps Region; re-flagged as Headquarters, Special Moscow PVO Army • Southern Front PVO 21 April 1944 – 24 December 1944 formed from Headquarters, Eastern PVO Front; re-flagged as Headquarters, Southwestern PVO Front • Southwestern Front PVO 24 December 1944 – 9 May 1945 formed from Headquarters, Southern PVO Front
Cold War All the possible air components were divided (as of 1945, before the 1949 reforms of the
Soviet Armed Forces) into: • Active army (,
deystvuyuschaya armiya) – air forces assigned to fighting fronts, known as
frontal aviation • PVO Territorial Defence Forces (,
voiska PVO territorii strany) • PVO Territorial Armies (,
armiya PVO territorii strany) • Reserve forces of the Stavka High Command (,
rezerv Stavki VGK) • PVO of military districts (,
PVO voennyh okrugov) • PVO of inactive fronts (,
PVO nedeystvuyuschih frontov) The PVO Strany was separated from the other
Soviet Armed Forces services in 1949. In June 1949, the
15th Guards Fighter Aviation Division and
180th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment PVO, among its regiments, were transferred to the PVO Strany, becoming part of the
20th Fighter Air Defence Army at
Oryol. There, the regiment became one of the first equipped with the
Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-9, the first of a series of
Mikoyan-and-Gurevich Design Bureau jet fighters. In April 1950, the regiment received its first
Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15s. In May 1954, the PVO Strany was raised to a status equal to the other service branches of the Soviet Armed Forces, receiving its first commander-in-chief: Marshal of the Soviet Union
Leonid Govorov. The PVO's principal role was to shoot down
United States Strategic Air Command bombers if they penetrated Soviet airspace. Secondary target were U.S.
air reconnaissance aircraft. There were a number of such aircraft shot down while operating around the Soviet borders, including MiG-17s downing a US reconnaissance
Lockheed C-130 Hercules over Armenia, with 17 casualties in 1958. The PVO gained an important victory on May 1, 1960, when a
S-75 Dvina missile downed
Gary Powers's
U-2, causing the short
U-2 crisis of 1960. (See Strategic Air Command#Strategic Reconnaissance) The PVO had its own chain of command, schools, radar and sound director sites. On March 30, 1967, a Directorate of the Chief of Anti-Missile and Anti-Space Defence (
Управление командующего войсками противоракетной и противокосмической (
УКВ ПРО и ПКО)), under Lieutenant-General of Artillery Yuri Votintsev, was formed within the Air Defence Forces. In February 1971 the 1st Division for Warning Against Missile Attack (1st Division WAMA,
1-я Дивизия предупреждения о ракетном нападении (
1-я дПРН)) was formed with HQ in Solnechnegorsk, the 57th Separate Radiotechnical Nod in Olenegorsk, Murmansk Oblast and the 129th Separate Radiotechnical Nod in Skrunda, Latvian SSR. Organisationally, there were two main PVO districts for most of the USSR's postwar history, the
Moscow Air Defence District (formed 1950) and
Baku (formed 1954). In 1963 the 30th independent Air Defence Corps in Tashkent became the
12th Independent Air Defence Army. In 1977, the Air Forces and Air Defence Forces were re-organised in the Baltic states and the Leningrad Oblast (a trial run for the larger re-organisation in 1980 covering the whole country). All fighter units in the PVO were transferred to the VVS, the PVO only retaining the anti-aircraft missile units and radar units – the 6th Independent Air Defence Army was disbanded, and the
15th Air Army became the
Air Forces of the Baltic Military District. By 1981, the now Voyska PVO had been stripped of many
command and control and training assets, which were moved to the Air Force. During the 1980s, the PVO interceptor units were re-equipped with the
Mikoyan MiG-31 and
Sukhoi Su-27P, while missile units received new
electronic countermeasures systems and the
S-300 surface-to-air missile system. The modernization of the PVO prioritized units in the
High North and the
Far East due to the threat from American
spyplane missions and
United States Pacific Fleet carrier aircraft. Shelton lists a total of 140 officer commissioning schools, drawn from a
Krasnaya Zvezda list of 17 January 1980. That total included 15 Air Defence Forces schools (four Fighter Aviation, five radio-electronics, and six Anti-Aircraft Rocket). On 1 September 1983 the PVO shot down
Korean Air Flight 007 after the civilian airliner had crossed into restricted Soviet airspace and was mistaken for a spy plane. Previously
Korean Air Flight 902 had once crossed into
Murmansk airspace, and had to make an emergency landing when a Soviet Air Force Su-15 fired on it. Soviet government officials finally admitted their mistake much to the anger of the
South Korean and the United States governments. It even resulted in the forced and sudden resignation of the then Armed Forces Chief of the General Staff, Marshal
Nikolai Ogarkov, in the following year by the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union (leader of the Soviet Union)
Konstantin Chernenko.
Mathias Rust's flight to Moscow in May 1987 caused a massive shakeup within the PVO. It seems that after the KAL 007 shootdown of 1983, no one was willing to give an order to bring Rust's tiny
Cessna 172 down, and modernization programmes within the PVO had led to the installation of radar and communications systems at the state border that could not effectively pass tracking data to systems closer to Moscow. PVO Commander-in-Chief Marshal
A. I. Koldunov was only among the first to be removed from his position. Over 150 officers, mostly from the PVO, were tried in court and removed from their posts. A large-scale changeover of senior officers of the force more generally followed as well.
Under the Russian flag When the
Soviet Union dissolved, the air fleet of the PVO included roughly 2,200 fighters and interceptors. The personnel and equipment of many units were left in newly independent republics, although the impact of the loss was reduced by the relocation of some units back to Russia. The Russian Air Defence Forces ultimately inherited about 65% of final Soviet PVO assets. In December 1994, the
4th Independent Air Defence Army at
Ekaterinberg in the Urals was transformed into the 5th Independent Air Defence Corps, which in 1998 became the
5th Air and Air Defence Forces Army. In accordance with a December 1994 directive, the 14th Independent Air Defence Army was reorganized as the
6th Independent Air Defence Corps with the 16th Guards, 20th, and 94th Mukden Air Defence Divisions). In 1998, the force groupings and headquarters of the PVO that had remained within
Russia were merged with the
Russian Air Force becoming part of the
Moscow District of Air and Air Defence Forces, and the 4th, 5th, 6th, 11th, and 14th Armies of VVS and PVO. The
Day of Air Defence Forces (''Den' Voysk PVO'') was initially established in 1975, to be celebrated on April 11. In 1980 this was changed to the second Sunday of April. It is still celebrated in the Russian Federation even after the 1998 merger of the Air Defence Forces with the Air Force. . ==Commanders-in-Chief, Air Defence Forces==