Soviet Union to a line connecting the cities of Arkhangelsk and Astrakhan, often referred to as the A-A line, to the west of the Ural Mountains. The purges of the 1930s affected all branches of the military including the Soviet Red Air Force. The poor performance of VVS (Voenno-Vozdushnye Sily) during the Winter War with Finland had increased the Luftwaffe's confidence that the Soviet forces could be easily defeated. The standard of flight training had been accelerated in preparation for a German attack that was expected to come in 1942 or later. As a result, Soviet pilot training was extremely poor. The Soviet war effort in the first phase of the Eastern front war was severely hampered by the obsolete aviation industry. In 1941 the MiG-3, LaGG-3 and Yak-1 were just starting to roll off the production lines but were inferior in all-round performance to the Bf 109. Many of these aircraft were delivered before Barbarossa, but most of these were destroyed on the ground. The German advantage lay in high standards of tactical deployment, training and experience. The first task of the Luftwaffe was the destruction of the Soviet Air force to establish control of the skies. To achieve this, four Luftflotte (air fleets) were deployed with a strength of 4,389 aircraft, of which 2,598 were combat aircraft. In addition to this the German-Allied nations; Italy, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary committed another 980 combat aircraft. Of the Luftwaffe contingent 929 were medium bombers. The Luftwaffe had fewer bombers than at the start of the Battle of Britain because of heavy losses the previous summer. The attack on 22 June 1941 came as a complete surprise to the Soviet High Command. Unprepared, the Red Air Force lost enormous numbers of aircraft on the ground. Many of the Red Air Force pilots had not been trained properly on the fighters they were allocated, making missions less effective. The situation was so one-sided that some Soviet pilots resorted to ramming German aircraft if they could. The scale of the Luftwaffe's victory on the first day of operations was doubted by its commander-in-chief, Hermann Göring. The official report claimed 1,489 Soviet aircraft destroyed. Göring ordered this checked. After picking their way through the wreckages across the front, Luftwaffe officers found that the tally exceeded 2,000. The Luftwaffe's losses stood at 78 (24 Bf 109s, 23 Ju 88s, 11 He 111s, 7 Bf 110s,