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Originally Posted by Jack Sanders
Hello kolya,
The General Staff/Krivosheev loss figures are usually not worth the paper they are written on. Khazanov and Gorbach's book is the place to go for reliable data. They write that the 16 VA suffered 391 total losses between the 5th and 12th of July and the 2 VA lost 371 aircraft between the 5th and 18th.
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Hi,
Could you precise the title of the Khazanov and Gorbach's book, and if possible, what sources did they use, and do they separate combat and non combat casualties (which could explain part of the differences between sources, non-combat also including, if I remember well, worn out aircrafts) ?
The General Staff book was indeed most incomplete (although their (partial) data mostly corresponds to the figures you quote), but Krivosheev is usually a good source, and If you check in it, you have to take into account the Kursk defensive ops but also part of the Orel offensive, in which the losses were more than twice those of the defensive operation...
Honestly, the total figure given for the Kursk, Orel, and Belgorod-Kharkov operations (that is the german offensive and russian counterattacks) between 5/07 and 23/08, 1626 total combat losses seems quite possible, it gives an overclaim ratio of a bit more than 2:1 for the Germans which is not surprising for that time...
Is the total given by Khazanov and Gorbach much higher ?
Thanks,
Kolya.