Alexander Pokryshkin - Combat Record

Combat Record

The most accepted figures of his combat record are:

• 560 combat missions
• 156 air-to-air engagements
• Official score: 59 enemy aircraft shot down personally, and 6 together with other pilots

Note: based on Pokryshkin's memoirs and personal notebooks, his score stands above 100. The Soviet air force did not officially confirm kills whose wreckage could not be found, thus many aircraft shot down over enemy territory were never confirmed.

In recent years the actual amount of Pokryshkin's kills seems to become controversial, depending on the source. For example, Russian historian Mikhail Yurevich Vykov researched in official records of victories, and downsized his tally to 46 individual and 6 shared victories. This author, together with Aleksandr Rodionov, wrote an article mamed Mutnoye Nebo 1941 goda ("The Dirty Sky of the year 1941") stating that Pokryshkin tried to steal Rechkalov's kills during 1941. However, in the other hand, researcher Oleg V. Levchenko found -based in other official documents, personal documents of Pokryshkin found after his death (that he kept away of his family) and memoirs of other Pokryshkin's comrades- that Pokryshkin in fact shot down 94 enemy aircraft, damaged 19 and destroyed three more in the ground. Levchenko found that no less than 15 victories he scored in 1941 were not taken into account, because the documents confirming them were destroyed during the hurried withdrawals from one base to another. That might explain the difference between the figures of Vykov and Levchenko.

Other factor must be taken into account to solve such differences: Pokryshkin, as most other Soviet aces, also engaged in the common practice of giving his kills to fallen comrades. Each kill was rewarded with a substantial monetary bonus, and on of the day of a pilot's death all regiment kills would often be credited to him in order to give his family some support. Note that the vast majority of Pokryshkin's kills have been scored before and during 1943 (when the quality of the Luftwaffe's airmen was higher), and since the summer of 1944 he had been absolutely forbidden to engage in air combat (and he sometimes disobeyed the order).