]Taran

Taran is the Soviet version of a ramming attack. Boris Kobzan was the best in the world at this tactic. He survived 3 such attacks during the last war. His La 7 was built to ram the B-29. His unit has been practicing for almost a year against the big bomber. Practice run after practice run using plywood targets and even the German Gigant glider towed behind dual TU2S to get the speed needed to duplicate the American bomber. The VVS Tarans were as ready they could be and as luck would have it they were in position to give it a go. The Reinforced La 7R Fin was much faster than its much heavier gun carrying brothers. It was lighter in every way except where it counted. They were reinforced to withstand a massive air to air collision with a much heavier opponent. It was designed to cut like a knife through the tail sections of the B-29. Some of which were almost as big as the whole Fin itself. In addition it had a rocket engine installed that gave it a 3 minute burst of speed rivaled only by a true jet fighter.

Boris was not a good shot but then again he didn’t have to be, did he? He was probably the best pilot in the world at crashing into another plane. It was a very strange claim to fame but there it was. He flew with such precision that he could put his plane, closing in on the target, at a combined speed of over 600 miles an hour, in precisely the place and angle he needed. In his last ram attack he actually was able to land his plane quite nicely after taking down a Ju 88. It really was a remarkable skill to be able to crash into and opponent and live, at the kind of speeds that modern planes had to obtain to stay in the air.

The formations of Amerikosi bombers were in a shallow dive to gain speed and to get out of range of most of the Soviet fighters and interceptors. The tactic had worked very well and the Tarans where the only conventional Red Air Force planes in contention for an attack at the moment. The MiG 9s had got a few but not anywhere near enough. A number of the Fargos had gone down in flames to the guns of the P-80 jet fighters who found themselves in the enviable position of being in the majority for once in this war.

What this decrease in altitude did mean, was that the Fins were in their element. At 15,000 feet the La 7 had no equal outside of a jet fighter. They gained speed on the pack and had the best angle of attack on the bombers imaginable. Luck plays such a big part in the art of war and for once in this bombing raid, it was with the Soviets. The American jet fighters were still consumed with dealing with the MiG 9 Fargos and the Tartan squadron following Boris each had time to pick their targets. They were not harassed and came boring straight in. This allowed them the luxury of lining up their attacks and then side slipping to throw off the aim of the big bombers gunners.

It’s hard enough trying to hit a small fighter plane coming in from the front quarter high and low. Add in a side-slip and you're pretty much untouchable. The reason that fighters weren’t successful more often in this kind of attack was twofold. The escorting fighters usually prevented you from taking the time to line the attack up and second it was even harder to hit a target with your own shells when you were side-slipping towards it.

If you are trying to collide with a target it didn’t matter so much; in fact if you were practiced, it was the only way to miss the wings and hit the tail area. Once past the wing a quick flick and you could hit the aileron with the heavily reinforced wing root of the La 7 Fin in a slicing maneuver that the Fin should win 9 times out of ten. And Boris’s squadron did. They got 9 hits with 8 outright kills and that Tartan surviving. There was another slow motion death of a bomber and an outright miss with an easy kill for a trailing P-80 on the 10th member of the squadron.

Boris got his fourth ramming kill with an absolutely perfect strike on the Winnie May that barely damaged his wings. His prop was gone but he could glide with ease towards a possible landing in some farmer’s field. Six of the other Tartans fared well, with three going down with their intended victims. All were able to get out of their damaged planes and complete their trip to earth beneath a stark white canopy of silk and destined to fly again. Nikolai Zelenko died as he bled out with a piece of the Milk Maids rudder in his neck.

The other Tartans took down another 14 bombers in twenty more semi controlled collisions and 7 Soviet pilots died along with 84 American crewmen in a matter of 2 minutes of utter chaos and horror for the bomber crews. The US had never seen this kind of attack in such a controlled and obviously choreographed manner. Some has seen the odd Kamikaze but never such an organized dance of death. It profoundly affected the thought processes of the surviving crews. This was of course, one of the main reasons to keep such a primitive form of attack in the Soviet arsenal and it was amply demonstrated here. This attack would stay in the minds of perhaps a thousand American flyers for the rest of their lives and profoundly affect every one of them forever. This was real war. No killing from afar, no shooting some machine out of the sky but physically ramming your opponent. This was personal, and this was how the Slav fought the Germans, Napoleon, the Golden Hoard and now the Americans.


Taran Near Miss

It was The Military Channel their work is accurate and the gist of it was suicide attacks and the Japanese were also crashing into our planes at the end ,,Other countries were also desperate at the end and although it wasn't true Kamikaze it was crashing into an enemy plane and trying to survive..It's a question of semantics but the Germans and Japanese were both trying to perfect a flying guided rocket the pilot flew it to the target and he guided it in..They were mounted on a mother ship bomber who would get as close as they could to the target and released it..Thanks for the link..I agree Taran is a better name for the tactic