Need help for LW-losses Normandy
 

At this site: http://feldgrau.slacker.se/wwiilexic...-m-fbottom.htm
there are some interesting tables.

My question is table III, are these losses for all causes or losses by enemy?

Personella förluster, döda
Personella förluster, sårade
Personella förluster, saknade

I think first one means KIA, but the rest? may be WIA and MIA, which means what.

Does Stridsuppdrag means Sorties?

Hm, if my Swedish doesn't fail me. . . :wink:

Personella förluster, döda = personnel losses, dead
Personella förluster, sårade = personnel losses, injured
Personella förluster, saknade = personnel losses, missing


Yes. Either sortie or sorties.

Hey - your Swedish is excellent! Four out of four right! :D

Anyway, lucky you chosen few who understand the language of (trumpets here!) the people of glory and honour - Swedish. The article on Normandy 1944 which is referrred to in the post above is just excellent.

thank you,
i never learned swedish, but is a little bit similar to my own language german.

indeed, although i can't read swedish, i think this article is very useful.

i need it to compare kursk 7/43 with normandy 6/44:
kursk (whole july) / normandy
personel losses (kia + mia): 238 / 77 (only pilots for 8 fightergroups jg-3 not complete at least 5 additionaly rk-pilots)
airplane losses total: 551 / 390-400
airplane damaged: 290 / 270-280
sorties: 13315 / 45999

Please tell me how you arrived at the "Kursk figures"? Due to your source, how many of Luftflotte 6's and Fliegerkorps VIII's aircraft were destroyed due to hostile action on 5 July 1943?

Stridsuppdrag
 

Wouldn't the correct translation be combat mission instead of the more generic sortie?

In this case most germanic languages can translate.

Swedish - Strid & Upptrag

Dutch - Strijd & Opdracht
German - Streit & Auftrag

Danish?

English might still hold the root in the word strive, but mission and sortie are unfortunately signs of Latin (or more exact FRENCH) contamination, Anglo-French relations are strong :D

Yves, aka Hawk-Eye our resident language wonder, may have some further thoughts on the subject?

Carlsberg :lol:

Personal losses counted by different jg-books and loss lists (jg-3 only II). Due extensive use of Bombers and so on, flying personal losses must be higher than in normandy.
Sorties by german Korpsmeldungen.
Airplane losses by russian book from 2004, need to search the title.

First day losses of Luftwaffe i can't split sorry. IIRC the LW Korpmeldungen claimed only 26 Airplanes lost at 5th July. Indeed, if you compare whole July Korpmeldungen with Flugzeugbestand und Bewegungsmeldungen, losses gets twice (whole July). Break this down at 5th July, roundly 50 german planes were lost.

That was what I suspected. The daily returns to the Generalquartiermeister shows that actual combat losses were several times higher.

Even that figure is too low. I'm sorry if I can't give the actual figures here and now, since those will be the subject for the forthcoming volume of "Black Cross/Red Star".

Reply to Ruy on combat sorties etc.
 

Yes Ruy, you're right : the Swedish word "stridsuppdrag" corresponds more "COMBAT sorties"; as we know many sorties can be non-combat. On the other hand often the context is perfectly clear and the author(s) can only mean COMBAT sorties. In such (frequent) cases it is legitimate to write "sorties" only. Swedisch stridsvagnar = (battle) tanks, main battle tanks. Strid means combat. Eldstrider = gun battles = Feuergefechte.

Nevertheless we ALWAYS must be very careful when translating "obvious" things. Remember that the German wen is not when in English but whom, the German wer is not where but who, the German wo ist not who but where... I guess those old Englishmen had two bad ears each when the Saxon invaders came. And the English "eventually" is virtually never to be translated with "eventuell" in German (but with "schliesslich", "am Ende") and correspondingly in other languages like French. This is one of the main pitfalls for language students during their examination.

Yes, the French language proved its vast superiority over Anglo-Saxon in England after Guillaume le Conquérant took over following the Hastings victory! No... in fact in most cases everybody will adopt the words in the language in which they appeared first and conquered the world : this is true of many French words in aviation (fuselage, aileron...) and, for ex., of many US words in electronics and computer technology : transistor, microprocessor, PC, laser etc. Even a few German words made it : Panzer, Stuka, Blitzkrieg (a word invented in Britain it seems), but also Bauhaus. Too bad X-rays were discovered by a German, Röntgen, and in Germany they say Röntgenstrahlen for X-rays, but no foreigner is able to pronounce this name correctly so they cowardly chose les rayons X instead. The French invention "manche à balai" (broomstick) was too difficult for foreigners so it became a joystick (!) etc.

Main pitfalls? Hm - not to mention the Swedish word "pittfall" which is something terrible for both sexes. :wink:

I have researched a little bit the figures of the battle of Kursk. I was also especially interested in the 5th July and there in southern sector.

Germans claimed in Korpmeldungen 26 losses for 423 kills. In southern sector these contains 220 air kills and 40 aaa-kills. Losses according to Luftflotte 4: 12 Bf109, 1 Fw-190, 1 Hs-126 and 5 Bombers (19 losses).
To get a clearer picture i try to look close at the units.
As known by Jg-52 personal losses, at 5th July III/Jg-52 alone lost 6 pilots, including Krupinksi who was very wounded in an aircombat over the own airfield!
loss list by Barbas:
1 ) 8.St Fw Karl Schumacher , W , Notlandung
2 ) 8.St Uffz Martin Leschkowitz , + , Bauchlandung
3 ) 8.St Uffz Manfred Lotzmann ,MIA , unbek
4 ) 8.St Fw Wilhelm Hauswirth , MIA / KIA , Flak
5 ) 9.St Fw Walter Knehs , MIA , Luftkampf
6 ) 1.St OFw Basilio Maddalena , MIA , Lk
7 ) 2.St Uffz Hans Baumgart , MIA , Lk
8 ) 3.St Uffz Edgar Hess , MIA / KIA , Lk
9 ) 7. Staffel, Krupinksi, WIA, LK

The text in "Holt Hartmann vom Himmel" states that 7. Staffle lost alone 5 pilots at 5th July, but according to Barbas most of them cames from 8. Staffel. According to Flugzeugbestand und Bewegungsmeldungen III/JG-52 lost 20 planes, 13 "by enemy". Also Rall states in his biography only the losses known by list. Thats the personal losses of JG-52 at 5th July, together 9. Luftflotte stated 12 109 lost at 5th July, so JG-3 only lost 3 Bf-109, which is quit low for 2 1/3 groups.


Soviets figures for that day states:
airkills: 154 / 71 fighters / 83 bomber / 81 airbattles
losses: 36 fighters / 15 bomber / 27 assault (78) of 2nd air army
17th air army lost 200 planes whole july, of these 68 were lost in combat, greatest part should be at 5th july.

Hello Jens,

I believe the following link leading to Pawel Burchard´s excellent site devoted to aerial operations during the Kursk battle will be useful to you:

http://www.lesbutler.ip3.co.uk/tony/pawel/index.html

You can find out that the losses of JG 3 on 5 July 1943 were definitely higher than just 3 Bf 109s.

Hope this helps a little,

Ota

Thanx

I don't know this site was working again.

edit: For me it's everytime a little bit strange, to state simple LW/Wehrmacht statistics, since it is known, that Wehrmacht falsified figures. At the end of 1943 Wehrmacht had 500.000 KIA's more, than appeared in statistics.

The Hawkeye view of history
 

Hawkeye says: "Yes, the French language proved its vast superiority over Anglo-Saxon in England after Guillaume le Conquérant took over following the Hastings victory!"

Do you mean the man known at the time as "Guillaume le Batard" by any chance? He wasn't French, he was a Norman (derived from "Norse Man", i.e. a displaced Viking).

As for linguistic superiority, French may have given us aviation terminology but Anglo-Saxon continues to supply all our best swear words!