At dawn on June 22, 1941, fighter pilots were among the first to give battle to the Luftwaffe aces. Some of them managed to make their first combat missions; others ran to the airfield to find their crashed plane there. The first strikes were followed by a chaotic retreat, reorganization and the journey to the front, where they faced battles with superior fighters and bombers, attacking the advancing enemy, and escorting attack aircraft. In these battles of the first months of the war, the Air Force personnel with pre-war training were almost completely eliminated, but those few who survived formed the backbone of the Air Force fighter aviation. In this book they tell how, having gained experience, rearmed, and mastered modern aircraft, they were able to turn the situation around in the air over the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. Based on materials from the sites “I Remember” www.iremember.ru and the Russian Air Force www.airforce.ru Design of the series by the artist P. Volkov The book uses photographs from personal archives Color profile projections of aircraft, comments and lists of victories by M. Bykov