Stalingrad Airlift
 

Are there any details of losses of Transport aircraft of the German Allies supporting the Airlift. The recent Christer Bergstrom Stalingard book mentions the loss of several Italian aircraft and a Rumanian Ju52.

Re: Stalingrad Airlift
 

Hello
IIRC Christer gives LW losses in his book.
Hayward's numbers, from his Stopped at Stalingrad, 166 destroyed, 108 missing and 214 written off.

HTH
Juha

Re: Stalingrad Airlift
 

hello Juha,
is your list a detailed list were every plane is listed?

Re: Stalingrad Airlift
 

Hello Philippe1
no

Juha

Re: Stalingrad Airlift
 

Juha, thanks for the reply.

Phlippe1, Some time ago I started to list the Luftwaffe losses for the Airlift from the Luftwaffe QM's held on microfilm at the Imperial War Museum, London. As far as I know apart from the Unit histories of the Bomber units added to help the airlift the Luftwaffe QM's records are the only other source of loss details for the airlift.

As a general question does anyone know of any Unit histories of the Transport units involved.

Re: Stalingrad Airlift
 

Hi Brian,

A good book is:

"Die Deutschen Transportflieger", von Morzik/Hümmelchen

Re: Stalingrad Airlift
 

Hello Brian
sorry, I misunderstood Your original question. No info on detailed losses but you might be interested in that in Manfred Kehrig’s Stalingrad (Stuttgart 1974) there is a list of transport force which gives daily figures per a/c type: Ist, am Platz, einsatzbereit, eingesetzt, erfüllt and Versorgungsleistung.

And on direct effect of ground fighting on LW transport fleet losses. When 24 Tank Corps raided Tatsinskaya at Christmas 42, as you surely know, LW lost 46 airworthy transports, books I have don’t give the number of u/s a/c lost, but the 24th Tank Corps (renamed during the raid to 2nd Guards Tank Corps) claimed, IMHO clearly exaggerating, that they destroyed 350 a/c on a/fs and 50 more loaded on rail cars.

Juha

Re: Stalingrad Airlift
 

Hello Byron and Juha,

Thanks for the advise about the books. I gathered the claims of 350 a/c destroyed in the Christmas raids was far to high.
A quick count up of what losses I could find showed just under 500 a/c damaged, crashed or missing from the Transport units and supporting Bomber units. Of these losses 71 were destroyed in air raids, by Soviet ground troops or by German troops.
One thing that was repeated in several books was that aircraft from schools were used which ofton meant the loss of pupil and instructor pilots. Unless these school losses were not included in the QM's list the majority of losses only showed one pilot, typical Ju52 crew being Ff, Bf, Bm and Bf althogh some also had a B.
Some books also show the loss of up to 1100 aircrew what I could find was 680 killed or missing with 200 more injured/wounded. However around 40 aircrew originally shown as missing or wounded were later corrected to returned or unwounded.
I hope to be able to improve my rough loss lists and have a more accurate count later when time allows, and any further information can be added,

Regards

Brian Bines

Re: Stalingrad Airlift
 

There was a history of II./TG 1 «Geschichte einer Transportfliegergruppe im II. Weltkrieg» from the Kameradschaft ehemaliger Transportflieger. Georg Schlaug put it togther for them. It had a Stalingrad chapter and came out in 1989.

Re: Stalingrad Airlift
 

Nick, thanks for that might be a difficult one to get hold of but I will give it a try,

Cheers

Brian Bines

Re: Stalingrad Airlift
 

The Italian air force had on the Eastern Front transport aircraft (S.81) and also used bombers on the transport role.

In the Stalingrad pocket period (19/11/42-4/2/43), the Air Mag Hors-Série n° 5 (subject: the Italian air force on the Eastern Front. In French, writen by Dmitryi Karlenko) lists the following Italian aircraft lost during transport sorties:

4 Dec 1942: a BR.20 of 116a Squadriglia returning from a wounded evacuation sortie crashed on landing at Voroshilovgrad. The pilot, Aurelio Sanarica, the navigator, Felice Scognamiglio, and at least three of the German wounded aboard, Lt Otto Kral and Fronober and Uffz Erwin Florkowski, were killed. 1.Av Marc. Guiddo Autorino and Av. Sc. Eligio Bernardis were wounded and the latter died of his wounds sometime later in hospital.

Coming back with German wounded may indicate a flight to Stalingrad pocket, but it is far from proven.

after the Soviet attack against the 8th Italian Army on 16 December and the collapse of the front some days later, the S.81 were busy supplying the retreating Italian units with ammunitions, food and medical supplies, bringing back wounded on the way back. The text says at least 6 Italian transport were lost, but only gives details for one:

29 December 1942: the commander of the Italian air force in Russia, General Enrico Pezzi, took off with a S.81 to supply Axis troops (7000 Italian and 4000 German) surrounded by the Soviet 1st Guard Army. It flew with no porblem to Chertkovo, landed there and unloaded food and medical supplies, before taking off loaded with wounded, but never returned to Voroshilovgrad. Despite all efforts, nothing will be found and this aircraft and all the men aboard are still missing.

Re: Stalingrad Airlift
 

Hello Brian
Manfred Kehrig: Stalingrad.Analyse und Dokumentation einer Schlacht. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt,1979. 3.Auflage.
Beiträge zur Militär-und Kriegsgeschichte, Band 15.Herausgegeben vom Militärgeschichtlichen Forschungsamt.
680 Seiten und 13 Beilagen im Anhang( komplett).
At least one of that edition seems to be in sale at e-bay. It's not a history of the air-lift, it's POV is that of ground war but in it there is plenty of info on supply situation of 6th Army. Very thorough study maybe possible to loan one by inter-library loan.

Juha

Re: Stalingrad Airlift
 

Brian,

I also work with GQ loss returns from Stalingrad airlift and combat operations, that were shared by one of the fellow researchers. I suppose they are from microfilm of IWM in London. Being deep into Stalingrad research for more than five years, I think this list is not fully complete. I failed to find some cases clearly described from Soviet side. To my mind, mess that started from the end of november hampered officials to report losses correctly.

BR.

Re: Stalingrad Airlift
 

The italian BR.20M mentioned by Laurent was coming from Kantemirowka and not from Stalingrad.

Gianandrea

Re: Stalingrad Airlift
 

Gianandrea, if you have any of the following details about the 4 Dec 1942 loss I will be interested:

_ serial of the BR20
_ ranks of the pilot and navigator
_ while a Lt Krall and an Uffz Florkowski are listed by Volksbund as dying at Voroshilovgrad airfield on 4 Dec 1942, there is no Lt Fronober in their database. I tried without success variations of this name. Just wondering what name you may have in your source ?

Thanks in advance

Re: Stalingrad Airlift
 

Laurent:

Tenente Pilota Sanarica Aurelio
Tenente Oss. R.E. Scognamiglio Felice (R.E.= Regio Esercito)

Leutnant FRONOBER Enz (Heinz?)

The name of 1° Av. Marc. Autorino was Guido (not Guiddo).

ciao

Gianandrea

Re: Stalingrad Airlift
 

here a page of Morziks book refering the transport plane losses in Stalingrad

Re: Stalingrad Airlift
 

There is a Heinz Fronober listed by the Volksbund, missing since 1 Dec 1942 in Bogutschary / Romanowsskaja area. From past experience, missing people with date as the 1st of the month in the Volksbund database were often posted missing later during the month, this only meaning the day is not known. I already found him but I just found curious the fact that the two other German losses are listed with the right death date and location (including the fact that they died on the airfield) and not him... With your return, it is probably him.

Re: Stalingrad Airlift
 

Here is what I could find about bomber/transport losses of the Rumanian air force during the air bridge (though, as far as the bombers are concerned, I don't know wether they were on a bombing or a transport sortie) :

- 27/11/1942 : Grupul 1/Esc. 71 loses Savoia JIS-79 n° 117 to Soviet fighters.

-29/11/1942 : Grupul 1 : Savoia JIS-79 n°134 is mistakenly shot down by German Bf-109G fighters.

- 30/11/1942 : Grupul 5 : He-111 n°20 is damaged by Soviet fighters (reportedly Yak-9s) then crashes on landing back at its base.

- 22/01/1943 : Grupul 5 : He-111 (flown by the crew of A/C Petcu) lost to Soviet fighters (reportedly P-39s). the plane crash-lands in friendly territory, crew is safe.

- dates unknown : Escadrila 105 : 3 Ju52s lost at Stalingrad.

I don't know about the He-111s, but the Savoias were at least partly used for evacuation flights from the pocket.

As for the Italians, it seems they lost 5 S-81s in all on supply flights, I'll see if have more about that.

Hope that can help you,

Kolya

Re: Stalingrad Airlift
 

Thanks to eveyone for the help on this one, Kolya the info on the Rumanian losses greatly appreciated if you can find the S-81 losses that be be great, I noted the one by Laurent with Gen. Pezzi. I will try to hold of some of the books mentioned by Juha and others, thanks again to all,

Regards

Brian Bines

Re: Stalingrad Airlift
 

Sorry to answer so late. As for the Italian losses, my source is the same as Laurent's and I could only find mention of 6 Italian transport aircraft losses (including Pezzi's) at the time of the airlift missions, 3 of them to AAA. At least one plane was also damaged (19/12/1942 : one S.81 had its fuel tanks perforated by bullets fired from the ground while evacuating the airfield near Kantemirovka).

Additionally :

- 04/12/1942 : 116 recon esc. BR.20 crashes on landing while evacuating wounded German officiers : 2 crewmembers killed, 1 crewmember mortally wounded, 1 crewmember wounded + 3 of the evacuated Germans killed. But it's not clear wether the plane came from the zone held by the surrounded Axis troops in Stalingrad or elsewhere.

I looked only for the tranport missions, and it's worth noting that bomber units also suffered a number of losses on recon or offensive missions (at least 3 BR.20s were lost on these).

There are also 2 other cases you could be interested in :

- 09/01/1943 : 116 recon esc. Italian bomber (probably BR.20, I don't think Ca-311s were considered as bombers) is rammed by German Ju-52/3m at Millerovo airfield.

- 16/01/1943 : 116 recon esc. plane flown by Lt Nicola di Feo is missing. The type of mission is not specified.

For the last two cases, one doesn't know if they are relevant here because 116 esc. flew Ca-311s as well as BR.20s and its main mission was reconnaissance but it also flew bombing missions and, as seen in the 04/12/1942 incident, occasionally transport ones... But I'd say that it's probable the 16/01/1943 loss was not transport related as these missions were apparently not the most numerous.

Hope this can still help you,

Kolya.

Re: Stalingrad Airlift
 

Though not immediately relevant to the discussion here, this link provides an article and extensive Notes at the end that include references that may be helpful for further research.


http://www.joelhayward.org/stalingradairlift.htm




Ed

Re: Stalingrad Airlift
 

Ed and kolya,

Thanks for your posts the, Italian losses and the reference for further research are really help,

All the best

Brian bines