Question about the air battle over the Kuban (USSR) in April-May 1943
 

Hello, dear friends.

Last summer, the Russian researcher of the air war on the Eastern Front Oleg Kaminsky published work on the analysis of the claimed victories and actual losses of the Luftwaffe and the Soviet Air Force in the air battle over the Kuban in 1943

The figures are so amazing that I decided to ask your opinion.

I've read in several authoritative works of Russian researchers describing the air war on the Eastern Front and published the last few years, that the claimed victories of Soviet pilots are absolutely implausible. German claimed victory, by contrast, generally very accurate (as far as possible in the fleeting dogfight).

For example, a detailed analysis of each day's air battle at the Kursk Bulge (two months!) in the paper of V.Gorbach "Over Fire Arc" (first published in 2007 in Russian).

Oleg Kaminsky (he used the documents from the archives in Freiburg) and open Russian sources claim that:

April 17 1943:

Soviet pilots claimed the destruction of 19 "Bf-109".
In fact not lost Luftwaffe fighters over the Kuban on this day. Only one "Bf-109" (Bf 109 G-2 WNr. 13,576 of II./JG.3) was hit and damaged during landing at 40%.

German pilots claimed to have destroyed 33 Soviet fighter over the Kuban on this day. O. Kaminsky has no complete data on Soviet losses that day, but Kaminsky has data on at least 11 Soviet fighters destroyed over the Kuban on this day.

Finally the question: Do you have any data on the losses of the Luftwaffe on this day over the Kuban?

If you're interested, I'll write later Kaminsky's statistics on other days of the air battles over the Kuban. There numbers are even more amazing.

Re: Question about the air battle over the Kuban (USSR) in April-May 1943
 

Hello Yura and welcome!
I'd be very intereted in Kaminsky's statistics. I don't have info you need but you can find LW's losses and strenghts per month and per Gruppe here http://www.ww2.dk/
just choose air units then the type of the unit then the Geschwader then roll down the page to the bottom and choose the Flugzeugbestand und Bewegungsmeldungen of the Gruppe you want. Remember that the lost planes are the planes lost for the unit so incl both the total losses and those damaged so badly that the unit was unable to repair them and had to send them away for the repairs.

Juha

Re: Question about the air battle over the Kuban (USSR) in April-May 1943
 

Hello yura,

It seems that you can read Russian, so the website is ideal for you:
http://www.airwar.ru/history/av2ww/a.../luftloss.html

It lists German losses on the Eastern Front. Not for the whole war, but the period between 1 April 1943 and 30 June 1943 is covered. No crew names, but otherwise it is coherent with what I have in other sources.

As for 17 April 1943, it is listing four damaged Bf 109s, three for II./JG 3 and one of II./JG 52. One of each unit was damaged without enemy action, and the two damaged in air battle bore close serial numbers 1376 and 13576, and may be only one reported twice with a typo in one case. No German fighters were shot down.