The German plan in the Soviet Union was to win a quick war, before the Soviet superiority in numbers and industry could take effect, and before the Red Army officer corps, decimated by Joseph Stalin's Great Purge in the 1930s, could recover.
Soon after, the Luftwaffe began preparations to neutralise the Voyenno-Vozdushnyye Sily Raboche-Krestyanskaya Krasnaya Armiya (Military Aviation of the Workers' and Peasants Red Army, or VVS-RKKA, often abbreviated to VVS) [REF].