During the Cold War, there was not only an ideological divide between the two poles. Both the USA and the USSR, which led the West and the East respectively, restructured their armies based on their battlefront experiences in the Second World War. According to the US Army, which owed its success over Germany to its air superiority, the main element of power was the aircraft in a possible Third World War to be used at times when the use of nuclear weapons was not an issue. As for the Red Army, it was rearranged in a different light based on much different experiences.

On June 22, 1941, the air forces of the Axis Powers composed mostly of Luftwaffe aircraft, covered the USSR territory like a swarm of locusts. Caught unawares, the Soviet Air Forces lost many of its aircraft, most of which could not even find time to take off. The ambush was so successful that during the first raid of the first day, 1800 red starred aircraft, and during the second day, 700 more were completely destroyed. Although in the coming period the USSR would move forward at the eastern front with such air aces like Ivan Kozhedub and Alexander Pokryshkin, it could never regain air superiority almost until 1945.  

When the war began to expand into the heart of Europe, American and British pilots managed to inflict harm on Luftwaffe after 1943, despite heavy casualties on their part. Out of the 750,000 aircraft built during the Second World War years, 350,000 had been supplied from the factories in the United States, which made it impossible for Germany, then fighting on two fronts simultaneously, to to turn the tide in its favour despite its high-tech jets. Commanders in charge of allied tanks, which encountered Germans in North Africa, Italy and Normandy, did not make much effort in observing a threat coming from the air. At the war, there were two versions of the story: One belonged to the Americans and the British, who had the luxury of calling out for air support whenever they came across with much superior panzers like Panther and Tiger; as for the Russians, they were used to seeing more swastikas than red star, whenever they looked up to the sky.