In 1941, there was only one front where “Stalin’s falcons” escaped defeat—the Soviet Arctic. Only here the Luftwaffe failed to seize complete air supremacy. Only here our pilots were not inferior to the Nazis tactically, from the first days of the war they began to fly in pairs of fighters instead of ineffective trios. Only here our combat losses were only one and a half times higher than the enemy’s, despite the surprise of the attack and the overwhelming superiority of the German aircraft industry. If the Soviet Air Force had fought everywhere like in the North, Hitler would have run out of planes already in 1941! This book, based on exclusive archival materials, published for the first time, not only restores the chronicle of air battles in the Arctic day by day, but also answers the main question: why the war here was so different from air combat operations on other fronts.