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Old 24th April 2006, 09:38
Jens Jens is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 147
Jens
Re: Lw-losses without enemy actions!

Luftwaffe documents of killed soldiers are not very relieable, if you read Overmans "Militärische Verluste". These documents were not doctored, but the Wehrmacht loss system was simply not very sufficent.
Therefore 430.000 KIA as a global number should be taken into account.

Also the system of the Luftwaffe aircraft reports has to be viewed with some scepticism. In Budrass "Flugzeugindustrie" is stated, that already before "Barbarossa" the statistices of damaged planes was lower by some thousand, compared to planes were repaired by industry in reality.

The high figures for non combat losses has IMHO also to be reviewed. One example:
Take this crash of Krupinski at 5.7.43.
Bf 109G-6 W.Nr. 20062 weiße 9 (80%) 7./J.G. 52
Krupinski, Oblt. Walter (RK) Injured, overturning on landing. (Flak?)
Ugrim/Belgorod F
by
http://www.lesbutler.ip3.co.uk/tony/...units/jg52.htm

Seems to be more a non-combat loss. As everybody know, Krupinski was already an ace in 1943. Look at Tollivers Hartmann book, there is stated, Krupinski had a hard fight with soviet fighters over the airfield and his 109 suffered hits at the rudder. So he tried an emergency landing and failed. For me this would be more a combat loss.
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