What do you know about the "Kuban Stairs" tactic?

[busdriver]

 

There is a reason why Shaw does not discuss this "ladder" concept, simply because it was never used that way. What Pokryshyn used was a "trail/echelon" formation where the "top" group was above and far enough behind the "middle" group where:

 

 

The reason Mouse Shaw didn't discuss the Bookshelf is he wrote his book in 1986 (that's when I got my copy) and we didn't have access (think translations of contemporaneous WWII Soviet tactics and doctrine). There were no copies of VVS fighter pilot memoirs floating around. But according to translations available NOW...the Bookshelf tactic was used. You say "trail/echelon" and I say "pairs with an altitude split."  

[unreasonable]

I'm reading Attack of the Airacobras (Trooper117 posted the cover) and I think Sgt_Joch is terribly misinformed to think it (Bookshelf, Stairs...whatever you want to label it) couldn't have been effective using the dimensions of the diagram Lucas posted. That's how the Bookshelf is described as translated in Attack of the Airacobras. Apparently it was extremely successful initially because it was something new for the VVS. It was an innovation from their previous wheel/caravan/lufberry. The 109 and 190 guys were caught off guard initially. Just because some other iteration of a tactic or formation was used previously, doesn't render it instantly ineffective. Tactics evolve.

 

Indeed. Early war (early for the Soviets at least) they were playing rock/paper/scissors while only knowing about rocks. The "invention" of Kuban Stairs is "Oh, paper!"

[unreasonable]

Yeah, right...it is obviously very important to you that we all appreciate the incompetence of the VVS and understand that what they did with formations in the Kuban was nothing new.

 

Only to the extent that I am interested in the truth based on the historic sources, and debating what that is sometimes develops new insights.  Whether you also end up appreciating that makes no difference to me.

 

It was new for them. As Feathered pointed out originally, it was not new to everyone else. The fact that the VVS was backwards due to the nature of the Soviet system, the Terror, the huge early losses etc is simply the explanation why it took so long them so long to evolve new tactical methods.

 

Sorry if my pointing this out offends you in some way. And of course if you disagree with that interpretation of history, you are free to say so, and why.