Office of the Historian

The President of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Soviet Union (Stalin) to President Roosevelt 24

[Translation]
[Moscow,] December 18, 1942.

I am very grateful to you for your readiness to help us. As to Anglo-American air-squadrons with personnel, at the present moment the necessity of having them sent to the Transcaucasia has passed. Now the major battles are and will be developing at the central front and in the Voronezh area. I shall be very grateful to you; if you expedite the delivery of planes, especially fighter planes—without the personnel which is now extremely necessary to yourself—to be used in the above-mentioned areas.

The peculiar state of Soviet aviation is that we have more than enough fliers, but not enough planes.

  1. Copy obtained from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N. Y.↩