NUMBER OF PERSONNEL KILLED
 

Good morning all
it is generally accepted that around that the RAF lost around 70 000 people during WWII and that the USAF lost around 40 000 crews.
Can we have a similar estimation for the Luftwaffe ? (ROM numbers will be fine)
Thanks
Gilles

Re: NUMBER OF PERSONNEL KILLED
 

Are you meaning just aircrew, or ground troops as well?

Re: NUMBER OF PERSONNEL KILLED
 

Aircrew, please

Thanks

Re: NUMBER OF PERSONNEL KILLED
 

For what it is worth, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luftwaffe provides some figures:

50 044 aircrew KIA and 31 601 MIA until February 1945 (question being if POW are included in the MIA or not, as they were in Abt 6 records, where there is no count of POW)

Same page gave total Luftwaffe casualties, including ground personnel, as 138,596 killed and 156,132 missing through 31 January 1945.

Another source (Overmans book) gives total Luftwaffe casualties for the war as 433 000 KIA and MIA (this time not counting POWs, but including post-war casualties in captivity).

Problem is that the Luftwaffe had a very high number of ground combat units (Herman Goering Panzerkorps, paratroops, Luftwaffe Felddivisions, and also all improvised infantry units created with ground crew (and even some flying crews) in 1945. And Luftwaffe groundcrews of flying units were far more likely to be victims of air raids or ground battle than USAAF ones or RAF ones (for the latter, at least in the second half of the war).

By the way the official US Army WWII casualty records (available here https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA438106.pdf) puts the number of dead of US Air Corps (then a part of US Army) at 88 219: 50 263 in battle, 1910 non-battle but linked to battle (most of them in captivity) and 35 946 "other nonbattle deaths". The battle casualties were mostly aircrew, not so much for the two other categories, even if the third includes all people KIFA not in operations. According to historian Anthony Mireles, there were during the war 6350 fatal USAAF accidents in which 15 530 people (mostly pilots and aircrew) died. My guess is that the total number of dead USAAF aircrew for WWII was around 70k. I remember reading the 40k number you cite for the USAAF casualties in Europe.
To fully compare US and German aircrew casualties, USN and US Marine aircrew (both corps were independent of US Army and had a strong air component during WWII) should also be included but I have no figure for them. Same for British aircrew and Fleet Air Arm casualties.

Edited: page 106 of the US Army PDF cited above shows that 25 844 of the non battle USAAF dead were killed in aircraft accidents, so estimate of dead USAAF aircrew for WWII should be raised to 75k.

Re: NUMBER OF PERSONNEL KILLED
 

On the German Docs in Russia website, OKW Akte 227, total Luftwaffe personnel casualties (inc. missing and PW) from 1 September 1939 – 30 September 1944 are given as 203,213.