[Andreas Brekken]

Hi, Rod

Your assumptions are partly correct and partly incorrect.

The main distinction with regards to losses goes between losses due to enemy action and losses where enemy action was not considered as part of the reason for the loss.

The German terms being:

d u r c h F e i n d e i n w i r k u n g

and

o h n e F e i n d e i n w i r k u n g

This main division is then subdivided in 17 more specific loss categories for the losses due to enemy action and 4 subdivisions for the losses where enemy action was not involved.

All losses due to enemy action would be considered as operational losses, if you were enaged by the enemy, your flight was an operational one by default.

If you were interested in the operational losses in the air only you would have to remove categories 10-15 from the equation, the categories that contain losses on the ground due to bombing, strafing and gunfire from artillery, tanks or infantry (and probably ships...)

The subdivisions for the non-enemy inflicted losses distinguish between operational and non-operational flights.

Thus a grand total would consist of summary loss categories 1-9, 16-17, 20-21 if one was to make a sum of all losses of aircraft on operational sorties.


Regards,
Andreas B