Quote:
Originally Posted by ArtieBob
As the war progressed, the number of Ju 87 dive bomber and ground attack a/c were reinforced by Schlacht versions of the Fw 190. Were these also used in a air to air fighter role , thereby reducing the need for BF 109s and Fw 190 in a primary fighter role? I do not have data on this, but it would seem that the number of air to air victories by the ground attack units would be a primary indicator. I also have data that the per sortie loss rates of LW a/c were significantly lower in the East than in the West. This would seem to indicate that the needed replacement rate would also be lower in the East. Please comment.
|
Hello Art,
Good to be able to exchange thoughts with you again. I am glad my study from 2016 still attracts keen interest!
The Schlacht versions of the Fw 190 were not used in particularly great quantities until late into the war, something which is not easy to understand when reading the published literature. Some primary source statistics for February 1944, a month of heavy battles in the East:
Average Fw 190 strength for the month, in all operational units: 674
Average Fw 190 strength for the month, in Schlacht units only: 162 (hence, 24% of total Fw 190 strength)
The breakdown of the Schlacht arm by aircraft type during the month, the figures are again monthly averages:
Ju 87: 455
Fw 190: 162
Hs 129: 52
Hs 123: 10
Total (sum of above): 679
The total number of known aerial victory claims by Schlacht units on the Eastern front is less than 900 - Johannes may have an exact figure readily to hand, though of course not all Schlacht claims are known. Remember that ground-attack pilots were not trained for air combat, so even though the ground-attack Fw 190s were relatively high-performance types, compared to very inferior Soviet fighter aircraft, they could not routinely engage hostile aircraft.
The career of August Lambert, the ground-attack pilot with by far the highest number of aerial victory claims, illustrates the point very well. He claimed 97 of his 103 victories within less than a month over the Crimea - claims which should be regarded with considerable suspicion, both because they were submitted during such a short time period, and because they abruptly came to an end. When Lambert met USAAF Mustangs on 17 April 1945, he was rapidly shot down and killed.
There were not enough Schlacht Fw 190s in the East to make much of a difference until late in the war, and they were in any case only rarely used as fighters. To cite some more February 1944 figures, the Luftwaffe's average frontline single-engine fighter strength for the month was 1,725, of which only 362 were in the East. Even if all the 162 Schlacht Fw 190s had been in the East (41 were in fact in Italy), and even if they were all capable of being used as fighters, this would have changed the strategic situation very little.
You are right that, broadly speaking, German loss rates per sortie on the Eastern front were much lower than against the Western Allies, though this was not a universal phenomenon. As a percentage of strength, rather than sorties flown, losses in the East also became catastrophic in the later months of the war - the Luftwaffe was badly outnumbered and its pilots barely trained.
More broadly, the air war on the Eastern front has been grossly misinterpreted, along with many other aspects of the history of the World Wars, because it has been rarely analysed in full context - as a part of a multi-front, global war. The air war in the East was peripheral to the course of the First World War, and it became so at a relatively early stage of the Second. I have discussed some of these issues in an article available for free, online, see historynet.com/battle-of-kursk-nazis-no-air-power/
Best regards,
Dan