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Re: Identifying Luftwaffe combat losses
Tim:
To follow up on what Jim P. said, the postings you see on this board, both German, Japanese and Allied, that list details of losses are the result of years of painstaking research, translation, and recording by many people, like Jim P., from a real variety of sources. While RAF and USAAF loss records are generally available in archives (with a lot of digging and work), the Luftwaffe is missing almost an entire year (1944) and other years are available in microfilm or fiche format from German archival sources. The Russian archives are just becoming available to researchers and there are dedicated people working hard to get them unearthed and recorded.
You must understand that all these records are either from typed or hand-written original sources, must be translated and are often incomplete. Hundreds of thousands of aircraft were lost by the various AFs from accidents and combat. Other sources include logbooks from pilots and unit records kept at the time.
It is an extensive, tedious, on-going process for those who are dedicated to working on it.
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