Comments by "bakters" (@bakters) on "The Red Army Air Force in the First Days of Operation Barbarossa" video.

A fighter outmaneuvered by a bomber is just silly talk. The Spanish War has shown, that German bombers were faster than Soviet fighter biplanes, that's all. The fighters simply couldn't even catch them. I-16 (monoplane fighter) on the other hand looks funny, but it was a decent, if temperamental, fighter aircraft. The Spanish liked the Rata (rat). Sure, Germans caught VVS in time of transitioning to new hardware, so they had plenty of biplanes still, but I venture saying that no ww2 or later front-line fighter could outmaneuver I-153. It even had semi-decent speed. Good for a biplane, I mean. No wires and extendable undercarriage were the main reasons for it.
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@3ddevelopment979 That is called a ceiling. Vertical maneuver is when an aircraft uses speed to climb sharply during a dogfight. When attacking bombers, the most useful fighter characteristics is speed. It allows for rapid approach from relatively safe angles and without suffering much from defensive fire. The other important characteristics is firepower. It allows for inflicting sufficient damage during a short fly-by attack. I-15 biplanes lacked both. But they could maneuver well nonetheless. Even in the vertical.
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@3ddevelopment979 "maybe he means [J]u87?" They were barely present in Spanish War. Anyway, I agree that it could be a problem with mistranslation. That makes perfect sense to me. But since I'm already replying, I'll correct myself. I-15 wasn't undergunned at the time of Spanish conflict. Legion Condor had Bf109A's, which were armed with two synchronized machine guns firing through the prop. I-15 had four of those, so it wasn't bad for the time. Of course the situation in 1941 looked totally different. In this context my statement was obviously correct. Actually, I-15 in Spanish War context doesn't look too bad at all. Of course it proved somewhat lacking when faced with the best Air Force in the world at that time, but it's not like any other mainline fighter from anyone else could do that much better. And Soviets could field the Rata in large numbers, which was competitive with the early 109s. In expert hands probably better, but not so good in the hands of an average pilot, so let's say that it was only competitive.
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