Over time, the Soviets sought to disguise Moscow in various ways to diminish the accuracy of the German bombing.
On July 21, 1941, the first air attack by the Luftwaffe (German Air Force from the Third Reich period) was carried out on Moscow. Units of the German Air Fleet 2 (German: Luftflotte 2) were activated, and as many as 195 aircraft were engaged to take off from the improvised runways on the Eastern Battlefield. 127 fighter jets eventually reached the target, dropping about 104,000 kilograms of bombs. The Soviet air defenses had about 1,000 cannons at their disposal, as well as aircraft to oppose enemy aircraft in the air.
The aforementioned first German attack was followed by more than 55 air strikes over the next three months. Over time, the Soviets sought to disguise Moscow in various ways to diminish the accuracy of the German bombing. For example, the golden domes of Orthodox churches were covered in green, and the walls of the Kremlin were painted in a specific way, to resemble a series of houses. They placed improvised small roofs on large and strategically important buildings, to make these scenes from a height look like groups of residential houses. The Germans stopped the attacks during the winter from 1941 to 1942, and continued them in the spring. The last German air attack on Moscow was carried out on April 25, 1942, and later the Germans no longer had sufficient resources to continue such offensive action.
