[Andreas Brekken]

Dear all!

I thought I should add a little post here. As I have told some of you in pm's, my work schedule does not really allow me to do anything related to Luftwaffe research until end of June.
However, as I see that there is some confusion with regards to sources and what they contain, I will try to give a short overview here today to try to demystify some of them. To limit myself I will only cover frontline units now.
As we all know, the most detailed day-by-day loss listings for the Luftwaffe are contained in the RL2-III records spanning parts of the RL2-III-7xx and RL2-III-11xx series. A major note that especially a lot of English speaking researcher seem to have a problem understanding is that the losses considered by the technical staff of the unit assessing the loss to be below 10% WILL NOT be found in these listings! Even if the damage was due to combat with the enemy. The regulations stated that these should be submitted from the unit no later than 48 hours after the incident in case of bodily harm to crew members or other personnel - I have seen that in some cases the loss has been reported over a year after the incident. For the conspiracy theoretics out there it is of importance to note that these reports and the subsequent statistical data built on it were the governing data for supplying the units with personnel and aircraft. So thos of you that are constantly wimpering and complaining about missing data - in some cases these can of course be missing because there were no longer a unit to resupply... looking at the Stalingrad data for example entire units simply cease to exist - their entire personnel roster put on the missing in action list - and if they were not able to write up their loss reports from the Gulag there is a probability that we have a few missing losses there - no conspiracy - just the problem of filing the report when you are dead.
These are available as Mikrofiche and microfilm rolls also from several sources - the quality in parts indicating that especially the guys filming the rolls currently at IWM must have been rather intoxicated at times...
Gathering the information from these in a relational database give a great tool to research and build statistics and aggregates on the data submitted on unit level. These reports have the highest granularity with regards to loss reporting, mainly due to the fact that apart from the so called Vordruck II - a slang term for what we tend to call Namentliche Verlustmeldung - currently deposited at the WASt - the other data that were largely transferred via telephone or telegraph type strips from the units have been destroyed.
In addition to these records, there is a vast amount of statistical data built on it, the main ones being the:
Summarische Verlustemeldungen an Flugzeuge und Personal - these records give the summarized losses at unit level, reporting loss date, loss report date, aircraft model, loss category (categorized in 21 categories - 17 for combat losses - 4 for non-combat losses), number of aircraft. The corresponding personnel losses split into officers and non-officers, missing, injured, dead, under the main in combat or non-combat categories.
Also - we have the Monatsmeldungen for Gesamt-Flugzeugverluste der Front- und Ergänzungseinheiten - containing the monthly losses of all front and operational training units split in the same categories as the Summarische Verlustmeldungen. These have to additional 'reporting dimensions' and I will describe them here:
Main sheet contain the number of aircraft losses in the 21 (17 + 4) categories, split on unit category (for example Jagd, Nachtjagd, Fliegende Verbände See, Schlacht, Kampf etc etc etc)
For each unit category (for example Fernaufklärer to use this as example here) one then have
One sheet broken down by aircraft type in the same 21 categories (in case of Fernaufklärer you have Bf 109, Do 217, FW 190, He 111, Ju 88, Ju 188 and Me 410 for January 1944)
One sheet broken down by Kriegsschauplatz und Luftflotte in the same 21 categories (in the example here we have the following for January 1944 - West (Lfl. 3 and Lfl.5), Süd (Lfl.2 and Lw.Kdo.Südost), Ost (Lfl.1, Lfl.4,Lfl.5 and Lfl.6) and Erweitertes Reichsgebiet (Lfl. Reich only)
These sheets and a lot of other statistcs are based on the so-called 'Strichlisten' - also in German called the Aufschlüsselung der Verlustmeldung vom ...., handwritten information in preprinted sheets were the individual loss-records as typed up by the GenQu6 Abt are split into the categories necessary to create the reporting dimensions used.
I am sure (and have seen a few examples of this in letters and reports to the top brass in the RLM) that these were then submitted in multiple channels to act as 'business intelligence' data for the RLM.
I have plans to write up a larger article covering the orders, regulations and different resulting documents over the summer, with examples.
Most of the documents not destroyed by the allies should have been delivered back to Germany and the Bundesarchiv - Militärarchiv. Sadly for a vast amount we have rather crude translations only in fir example the National Archives in London, often these translations loose a great deal in just the ... translation.
Using these sources on will be able to cover the losses reported to the Generalquartiermeister from September 1st 1939 and up to the losses filed and recorded by April 1st 1945. Losses sustained but not reported by the report date April 1st 1945 must be pieced together from other sources.

Regards,
Andreas B