Since the beginning of Barbarossa in 1941, in 1942 and 1944 most of the Luftwaffe's combat sorties were flown on the Eastern Front.
The fact that the centre of gravity of Luftwaffe operations in 1941-42 was in the East is apparently not disputed by anyone. The data for 1941 up to 9 November can be calculated from Ob.d.L Füst Ic reports, they survived the war and are available online (NARA and TsAMO).
The number of sorties in 1944 is known from Gen.d.Flieger Koller's papers - in AIR40/2423 in English. The original (RL 2 III/1198) is not yet available online, but tables based on these papers can be viewed here:
https://jager-dmv.livejournal.com/1368.html
The West:East ratio in 1944 was about 1:2.
In January 1945 this ratio was more than 1:3.5, in February 1:5, in the following months undoubtedly even more so.
In 1943 this ratio based on general considerations should have been even higher. Unfortunately, it isn’t clear if the whole 1943 can be checked. But the reports for 17.9-31.10.1943 survived the war and are available online (RL II 2/844, 845, 332, 333, 334). 31.10 was not completely included in these files, so only 44 days can be compared.
It was a very active time in the West including the Mediterranean. It was a time of Schweinfurt-2 and other large allied raids, significant activity of Luftwaffe in the battles for islands in the Aegean. In the East it was the time of a series of Soviet offensive operations after the victory in the Battle of Kursk. It is also significant that this was the time, to quote Williamson Murray's excellent book "... the Luftwaffe. Strategy for Defeat", "the eastern
Luftflotten became the backwater of German efforts in the air".
I counted the number of sorties during this period, the West:East ratio was more than 1:2.8
These reports are not user-friendly, especially those concerning the West, one has to gather day-by-day data from several documents.
For part of the days in the East there are only preliminary reports and no final (more complete) reports, there may be some inaccuracies in the West as well, i.e. it is probably not an exact ratio, but it is obvious that with all possible refinements the ratio would be about the same.
In this case, it doesn't even matter if the ratio was 1:2 or 1:3. It is important to ask whether can be called a "backwater" for the Luftwaffe the front, on which in each of the years since the beginning of Barbarossa was a greater number of combat sorties than in all the western theaters combined.
Murray made his conclusions supported by losses data, and didn't take into account the number of combat sorties at all, as he apparently didn't know it. I wonder if his conclusions would have changed if he had known that.
He often used in his book the word “attrition”. I think the number of sorties has a direct correlation to attrition. Of course, the number of losses in the West for most of 1943 and in 1944 was higher than in the East, 1945 has to be talked about separately. I'm curious how much this is offset from the attrition point of view by high decommissioning due to wear and tear, high
Abwurfmunition consumption, etc. Perhaps some conclusions about the planes on 1943-44 can be drawn based on
Flugzeugbestand und Bewegungsmeldungeт. But it is very laborious.
It seems to me that this sortie ratio reflects the generally continental nature of WW2 in Europe and the need to support the troops on a front of immense length. The Germans could not neglect this need even when they began to have problems in the air over Germany itself.
Best regards,
Andrey