A high-level USAAF team led by General Frederick Anderson (accompanied by Colonel Elliott Roosevelt and others) inspected the base that month.

The runways comprised Marsden steel matting imported from the United States, and the fuel depot was filled with high-octane aviation gasoline from the U.S. A Soviet fighter regiment and several support aircraft were stationed at the field.

[1][page needed] Poltava was designated as USAAF Station 559 and became headquarters, Eastern Command, headed by General Alfred Kessler.

The concept of operations was for American aircraft to use England (8th Air Force), Italy, and the Ukrainian bases as vertices of a triangular bombing campaign against Axis targets in Eastern Europe and the Balkans.

Difficulties for the US forces began almost immediately, with a good example being how Joseph Stalin promised US military leaders that the Soviets would handle all air base defenses.

That is the date that he and the last remaining American military personnel left Poltava to attend a victory-parade celebration in Moscow as propaganda guests of Stalin the next day.

FRANTIC-2, which arrived from England late on 21 June, triggered equal euphoria that ended abruptly with air raid warnings beginning around midnight.

[1][page needed] About eighty German aircraft combined in one of history's most effective bombing raids, lasting over two hours.

The head of the Military Mission in Moscow, General John Deane reported back: "The Russian anti-aircraft and fighter defenses failed miserably.

Their anti-aircraft batteries fired 28,000 rounds of medium and heavy shells, assisted by searchlights, without bringing down a single German plane.

[6] However, most sources agree that the Americans initially received excellent cooperation from the VVS and from the local population, and that obstructions were the work of the Soviet political structure.

Ukrainian local women worked extremely hard on completing the base, and initially associated freely with American servicemen.

However, analysts agree that as a bombing tactic against the Axis, the Frantic raids were of limited effectiveness and entirely disproportionate to the enormous effort invested in the program.

Dispersal hardstands were built attached to each end of the single runway, expanded for jet aircraft use, some being hardened with Tab-Vee concrete shelters.

The Ukrainian Air Force eventually deployed the Tu-22M3 with the 185th Guards Heavy Bomber Aviation Regiment (GvTBAP), before this unit was finally disbanded in 2006.

[7] Also, a Tupolev Tu-160 (20 Red), supersonic, variable-sweep wing heavy strategic bomber inherited from the former Soviet Union is on display.