Three days later, Lieutenant A. G. Shevtsov claimed the regiment's first victory, a Heinkel He 111 bomber downed in air battle in the Novgorod area.

With the 5th Mixed Aviation Division, the regiment flew 450 combat sorties with the loss of thirteen aircraft and three pilots.

[3] On 14 July the regiment was transferred to the 39th Fighter Aviation Division (IAD) of the Air Forces of the Northern Front.

[1] With the Air Forces of the 8th Army, the regiment flew 1,323 combat sorties with the loss of 26 aircraft and seven pilots.

On 29 June Sokol was replaced by flying ace and Hero of the Soviet Union Major Pyotr Pokryshev.

[1] Pokryshev received a rare second Hero of the Soviet Union award but on 24 August suffered serious injuries that took him out of flying combat missions in the crash of a UTI-4 trainer.

[5] On 11 September 1944 the regiment received a squadron of ten Kittyhawks from the 191st IAP, departing for the Karelian Front, which were operationally subordinated to the 159th.

[4] The 159th did not see combat from November to the end of the war, covering the coast of Estonia and remaining in readiness to reinforce the Soviet aviation forces in Courland.

In late 1968 the regiment was transferred to the 131st Fighter Aviation Division of the Central Group of Forces in Czechoslovakia.

As Soviet forces withdrew from Czechoslovakia, the regiment was sent to Ivano-Frankivsk in Ukraine, part of the Carpathian Military District, on 21 January 1991.