ORIGINAL: Alpha77
ORIGINAL: BBfanboy
ORIGINAL: Lokasenna
Was it because their Defense skill was low, from only having trained Air skill (and not Strafing also)?
Could be just because the Soviet fighters are crap, at least the early war ones. And because most of the fighters are short-ranged, the bombers probably are unescorted on most missions.
Middle - late sov fighters are "ok" or even good. Their main prob seems to be weak armament.
I plan on activating them later in the game I play now btw. Will be interesting...
I admit to not paying too much attention to their defense skills, but they got better as the fighting went on (fewer losses). On the other hand, I took a peak at the Japanese units and found that most of their fighter groups in Manchuria had 65-85 avg experience, meaning that they had probably been flying CAP in the intervening the 3.5 years. So, skilled but green Soviet pilots were confronting experienced Japanese pilots.
So long as you have a deep reserve pool of trained Soviet pilots, you can get past this initial hump and your Soviet fighter units will perform progressively better. Even with the weak armament, the La-7 and Yak-9U are a good match for the late-war Japanese fighters. They may not shoot all that many down, but they usually end up with a positive kill/loss ratio. Best of all is the P-63 - late American armament, speed, and altitude capabilities, as well as drop tanks; however, since it is classified as a fighter-bomber, it is not available to most Soviet fighter units. You can partially get around this by upgrading a number of Il-2 units to P-63s and replacing their existing pilots with those from the fighter reserve pool (assuming you are playing PDU-on).
Only lacking def skill probably but exp & air must be high then....[;)]