Aircraft Losses By
1943 - October
to the Loss Table
table below helps to put the contributions and sacrifices
of JG 26 into historical perspective, and is worth careful
study. For three years, from mid-1941 to mid-1944, JG 26 and
JG 2 were the only Luftwaffe day fighter units defending German-occupied
France. For the first two of those years, JG 1 was the only
day fighter unit defending the Reich. In mid-1943 the buildup
of the American 8th Air Force in England forced the Luftwaffe
to strengthen its Western defenses, primarily at the expense
of the Eastern Front. Western historians agree that by early
1944 the Luftwaffe had lost the air war over all of Europe
except the Eastern Front. Allied air supremacy facilitated
the invasion of France and permitted the systematic destruction
of the Axis petroleum industry and transportation system.
Eastern historians argue that the back of the Luftwaffe had
already been broken in the fight against the Soviet Union.
What are the facts? Where was the battle for air superiority
fought and lost?
needed to answer the question are operational strength, losses,
and sortie rates. (A sortie is one combat mission by one airplane.)
Luftwaffe research has always been hampered by a lack of data.
The existing records are fragmented and inconsistent. In the
1970s Prof. Olaf Groehler, a prominent East German military
historian, was allowed to travel to the West German archives
and gather data that he combined with his own to produce a
major journal article. The article contains 23 data tables,
but unfortunately these are in wildly inconsistent formats
and categories. We have re-worked Groehler's data into a single
table, and present it here.
of aircraft are shown: "day fighters", which includes
single-engine and twin-engine day fighters, and "total
a/c", which includes all combat types. The table covers
only the period Sept 43-Oct 44; Groehler's data for the rest
of the war are either incompatible or incomplete. This is
the period during which the Luftwaffe lost the air war, according
to Western historians, and excludes the late-war period, when
the fuel shortage took full effect and grounded much of the
Luftwaffe. Unfortunately, Groehler obtained his "losses"
by combining operational and non-operational "total losses"
and "damaged" - a very strange thing to do, unless
this helped him prove his thesis. According to other data
in the original article, the "losses" in this table
are about twice the "operational losses", but there
are not enough data in the latter category to tabulate. There
are other peculiarities - Groehler put the Balkans in the
west, and we had to follow suit - but we take what we can
get. Assuming that all his loss numbers are off by roughly
the same proportion, conclusions based on comparisons should
be valid, but to emphasize Groehler's dubious practice we'll
put quotes around his "losses".
It is clear
from his text that Groehler's objectives were: (1) to show
that the German-Soviet front was the most significant source
of the Luftwaffe losses that ultimately led to Allied air
supremacy, and (2) that the Luftwaffe could not afford to
weaken its forces in the East, even when pushed hard by the
USAAF strategic offensive and the Normandy invasion. Groehler
did make these claims, to the undoubted pleasure of his Soviet
masters, but his data, when examined carefully, don't back
him up. Most Luftwaffe losses between mid-1941 and mid-1943
were, of course, incurred on the Eastern Front - that's where
most of the fighting was! But starting in late 1943 the number
of losses in the West increased sharply. Half of these losses
were day fighters, the single weapon most responsible for
the maintenance or loss of air superiority.
examine the table and draw your own conclusions, but here
are some highlights
the period in question, a constant 21-24% of the Luftwaffe's
day fighters were based in the East - but only 12-14% of the
Luftwaffe day fighter "losses" occurred in this
this period, a constant 75-78% of the day fighters were based
in the West. The turnover was enormous: 14,720 aircraft were
"lost", while operational strength averaged 1364.
this period, 2294 day fighters were "lost" in the
East; the ratio of western "losses" to eastern "losses"
was thus 14,720/2294 = 6.4 to one.
this period, a constant 43-46% of all of the Luftwaffe's operational
aircraft were based in the East. It should be noted that these
included entire categories (for example, battlefield recce,
battle planes, dive bombers) that were used exclusively in
the East, because they couldn't survive in the West..
this period, a total of 8600 operational aircraft were "lost"
in the East, while 27,060 were "lost" in the West;
the ratio of western "losses" to eastern "losses"
was thus 27,060/8600 = 3.41 to one.
are defined in this compilation as "total losses"
Gröhler, "Stärke, Verteilung und Verluste der
deutschen Luftwaffe im zweiten Weltkrieg", Militärgeschichte
17, pp. 316-336 (1978).
article did not include data on sortie rates. If it had done
so, the odds of survival faced by the pilots of JG 26 and
the other units in the West would have appeared even lower.
One table giving 1944 sortie and loss totals for all combat
aircraft has been found in the US archives. Its loss numbers
are only about one-third of Groehler's, and probably include
only total losses and writeoffs resulting from combat, a more
common definition of the term. The data:
- All Combat Types
times as many aircraft were lost in combat in the West than
were lost in the East, a ratio reasonably close to Groehler's
3.41 for all "losses". The most chilling statistic
for the JG 26 pilots appears in the sortie data. An airplane
flying a combat mission in the West was 7.66 times more likely
to be destroyed than one on a similar mission in the East.
It is clear that the burden of sacrifice was borne by the
Luftwaffe aircrew on the Western Front and over the Reich,
not on the Eastern Front.