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