Spitting Fire

摘要

One of the most famous Soviet aces, Arseny Vasilyevich Vorozheikin, was the most successful exponent of the Yakovlev fighter 'family'. His first taste of combat was not, as might be expected, against the invading Germans, but in the skies over Mongolia, fighting the Japanese. Hostilities between Imperial Japan and the USSR began in 1939 near the Khalkhyn Gol River (in English, Khalkha River) in Mongolia. Soviet high command sent several military units to bolster local forces, among them a squadron of Polikarpov 1-16 'cannon fighters' that included Vorozheikin among its pilots.