6th Guards Air and Air Defence Forces Army
military unit
The 6th Guards Leningrad Red Banner, Order of Zhukov Army of Air and Air Defence Forces (Russian: 6-я гвардейская Ленинградская Краснознаменная, ордена Жукова армия военно-воздушных сил и противовоздушной обороны) is an Air Army of the Russian Aerospace Forces.
The army was first active from 1998 to 2009, and was reformed in 2015. After the war, the Soviet Air Defence Forces' main command in the Leningrad area from 1960 was the 6th Independent Air Defence Army. As of 2020 it is the principal frontal aviation formation within the Western Military District of the Russian Armed Forces.
History
Origins
The army traces its lineage back to the formation of the 2nd Air Defence Corps before Operation Barbarossa, the World War II German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. The corps provided direct cover for the city, and the Air Forces of the Leningrad Military District had two fighter aviation divisions for air defense, which became the 7th Fighter Aviation Corps in July. In November, the 2nd Corps was reorganized into the Leningrad Air Defence Corps Region, but on April 5, 1942, it became the Leningrad Air Defence Army. During the Siege of Leningrad between 1941 and 1944, the air defence formations protecting the city claimed more than 1,500 German aircraft destroyed, and covered the Road of Life across Lake Ladoga. In the fall of 1945, after the end of the war, the army was reorganized into the 16th Special Air Defence Corps, which was redesignated the 16th Air Defence Corps in May 1946 and the 16th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Corps PVO in July 1947. In early 1949, the headquarters of the Leningrad Air Defence Region was formed from the corps headquarters.
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This entry incorporates text from “6th Guards Air and Air Defence Forces Army” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.