Re: Hooton's Luftwaffe Loss Totals - request for clarification
 

I am not a expert on this subject, but offer up a couple observations that might help you find collaboration or contradiction of Hooton. I've done a bit a reading on aircraft availability/losses in specific campaigns and found the following from other historians. I offer these as suggestion for your research & not as hard facts to cite.

1. The loss rate does seem to be lower on the eastern front. It appears about half the German aircraft losses in 1943 were in the west & the Med, despite that a majority of aircraft in combat units were in the east. There are a number of technical reasons that would contribute to this, a couple have been offered in this thread. One other that is seldom directly addressed by the historians is that the US & RAF replacement air crew (pilots) were better trained than the German replacement crew from latter 1942.

2. Numbers tossed out by various historians suggest that the German pilot training, particulary fighter pilot skill fell off significantly from 1942. I've not time to search out the numbers this morning but from memory the German was accumulating 20% fewer flight hours than his USAAF/RAF counterpart in early 1942 and more than 40% fewer in mid 1944. If this is accurate it suggests a large part of why GAF loss rates are what the books claim.

3. The lower loss rate among RAF/USAAF fighter pilots suggests a higher accumulation of experience in the combat groups as the months passed.

I'd recommend taking a look a John Ellis 'Brute Force'. While I'd not start citing Ellis s 63 statisitcal tables verbatim he does provide the sources for each individual table. In this respect his book is a encyclopedia of secondary and primary sources for WWII data and worth the effort for that reason alone

Re: Hooton's Luftwaffe Loss Totals - request for clarification
 

With all respect to Mr. Bergström, it is only his own assumption. I suggest that all aircraft that have been listed in "Durch Feindeinwirkung" and "Ohne Feindeinwirkung" columns were irreplaceable (i.e. total) losses. One reason for this is that the aircraft were completely excluded from their units. If an aircraft received a minor damage and only needs a minor repair, it would be still listed in unit strength returns as "temporarily unserviceable".

Re: Hooton's Luftwaffe Loss Totals - request for clarification
 

Yes, that is a big problem. However, my totals of aircraft being on strength are based on the same Bewegungsmeldungen (down to Gruppe or in some cases even to Staffel level) and seems like they have a very good coincidence with Luftwaffe strength figures for Eastern front known from other sources.

Re: Hooton's Luftwaffe Loss Totals - request for clarification
 

I have a different data. During 1943 Luftwaffe concetrated on Eastern front about 40-45% of their forces and suferred there about 42-45% of their losses.

The loss rate significantly drops down in 1944. In that year Luftwaffe have lost on Eastern front about 25-35% of their aircraft.

Re: Hooton's Luftwaffe Loss Totals - request for clarification
 

Hello Carl!

Your points are well made, but I think the situation is not quite so clear cut. Polemical statisticians like Ellis obscure the fact that no reliable and directly comparable figures regarding Luftwaffe strength and losses seem to have been published.

Trying to address the issue of loss distribution between fronts in 1943, I've looked at Hooton and got the following:
a) Eastern front: 3201 in combat, 2268 non-combat; 5469 total
b) Western Mediterranean: 2500 in combat, 1639 non-combat; 4139 total
c) Day Fighters over Germany from "Luftwaffe" p 188: 698 in combat, 533 non-combat; 1231 total
d) Bombers and Jabos over Britain - "Eagle in Flames" p 274: combat losses only listed, total 191 bomber and 65 Jabos; grand total 256

Adding in the unknown western day fighter, Reich night fighter and Eastern Mediterranean losses, looks like Maksim's percentage is roughly correct, maybe a little too high as far as the Eastern Front goes. What do you think?

I will be back soon with more ideas and possibly more data.

Re: Hooton's Luftwaffe Loss Totals - request for clarification
 

But Christer Bergström is a noted researcher who deals with a specific example in the message under discussion and seems very confident in his opinion. Since this is a matter fundamental to the use of a major documentary source on the Luftwaffe, we cannot discard Mr. Bergström's views so easily. See link:

http://forum.12oclockhigh.net/showpo...98&postcount=3

I am not so sure your strength numbers match the published data well. Here is a table comparing your figures to Hooton's, with breaks inserted for ease of reading:

Hooton Maksim M greater by
March 1943 1571 br 2496 br 925
April 1943 1777 br 2813 br 1036
May 1943 2070 br 2844 br 774
June 1943 2095 br 2955 br 860
July 1943 2002 br 3094 br 1092
August 1943 1858 br 2752 br 894
September 1943 1608 br 2432 br 824
October 1943 1510 br 2322 br 812
November 1943 1629 br 2353 br 724
December 1943 1583 br 2464 br 881

By way of minor addition to the loss data, Hooton lists 65 day combat losses in the West in the first half of 1943, so the Luftflotte 3 dayliight activities do not affect the loss picture significantly.

Re: Hooton's Luftwaffe Loss Totals - request for clarification
 

Part of the problem may be that Luftwaffe figures in different documents do not agree. But for what it is worth, there is Luftwaffe summary data for strength and losses for most of the war, with East figures separate from the rest (West, etc.) An RAF translation of "Gesamt Flugzeugverluste der Front- und Erganzungeinheiten" has quarterly data from 1940 to the end of 1944 with strength and losses for SEF, Bombers including Schlacht, and NJG. I don't have time to enter the entire table at this time, but here is the data for the quarter ending 31.12.43. SEF losses all-1954, East-335; SEF strength all-1561, East-385, Bomber losses all-1105, East-301; Bomber strength all-1604, East-241; NJG losses-323; NJG strength 611. Based on that data, my duty preference would be NJG. From sept 43 to Oct 1944 is a breakdown by month of losses as a result of air combat, bombed, strafed, Flak, etc. and non combat causes. There is another set of summary loss data, I can't put my hands on, but it give a much more detailed breakdown of loss data for 1944 and the first months of 1945. I did an analysis of this and posted some of the results on TOCH several years ago. IIRC, on a per mission basis, loss rates in the West were several times higher than those in the East, which surprised me when I first did the math. That the difference was so marked, even late in the war when I would have thought the USSR was pretty much on a par with the Luftwaffe was an eye opener for me.
Best Regards,
Artie Bob

Re: Hooton's Luftwaffe Loss Totals - request for clarification
 

Artie Bob, thank you very much for your input and for the tantalizing glimpse of something akin to the holy grail of loss totals! Would it be possible for you to post that information on the forum at some point in the future, or name the archival document wherein it is contained? I've done a quick search of your TOCH postings, but cannot seem to find those you are referring to. Could you possibly have posted that information on a different forum?

The totals you give add up to 636 SEF and bomber losses in the East in the final quarter of 1943. Hooton's sum for all losses for this period is 993, so it looks like these figures are reasonably similar.

The data in different sources certainly does not match very well, see as an illustration the comparison of monthly losses from January to October 1943 inclusive in Hooton's and Murray's books below:

Month Year Hooton combat H total Murray losses
January 1943 br 264 br 375 br 482
February 1943 br 226 br 386 br 318
March 1943 br 250 br 470 br 314
April 1943 br 147 br 315 br 238
May 1943 br 298 br 520 br 331
June 1943 br 209 br 379 br 249
July 1943 br 554 br 837 br 558
August 1943 br 386 br 682 br 472
September 1943 br 307 br 512 br 338
October 1943 br 272 br 471 br 279
November 1943 br 179 br 321 br 180

Paul Thompson

Re: Hooton's Luftwaffe Loss Totals - request for clarification
 

I can't say for certain but this looks like the kind of thing you find in National Archives files AIR20/7700 – /7712, which contain RAF translations of various Luftwaffe documents and statistics.

Re: Hooton's Luftwaffe Loss Totals - request for clarification
 

Nick, thank you for the lead. Is there also a possibility that translations of this kind can be found at IWM Duxford or the AHB? If so, is there any way that a private individual can ask to gain access to those archives? I have next to no research experience myself, having only ever looked at some AIR files on the Desert war in the National Archives. This makes me wonder whether one has to be a researcher of some repute to get into either Duxford or the Air Historical Branch.