[Kari Lumppio]

Good morning!

I am well familiar with the various aircraft maintenance concepts and schedules (both from former work and hobby).


Perhaps I should attempt to make my pondering more clear.

I have understood LW monthly reporting system as such:

Damage percentage below 10% (15%?) doesn't appear in the monthly strength returns at all.

Above 60% (?) was considered irrecoverable loss and was classified either ohne or durch Feindwinwirkung.

Damage percentages between 10-60% is the problem. These are not divided to ohne/durch Feindeinwirkung. It also seems they are lumped together with planes going out for a scheduled overhaul into the Überholung classification in the monthly returns. Is that so?

So there actually could be hidden combat losses in the category Überholung, yes or no?



Additionally I wonder if there was any similarities between the situation in Luftwaffe and Finnish AF. In the Finnish system there was two (or three) levels: unit level, depot and factory (VL). From the archived documents it looks like depot level repairs/maintenace left only job order and repairs report in the paper trail. On the other hand visit at factory involved also transfer and resulting deed of transfer document in the papers. Yet the actual repairs done on the aircraft could be more or less of similar difficulty level and extent! If only transfer documents (or monthly summaries) would be left in archives we would have no knowledge of the depot visits of FinnAF planes. As we all know the problem with Luftwaffe is the destroyed documents which do not allow getting detailed picture of the situation. Unlike for example Finnish AF, where practically all aircraft individuals have some paper trail left in the archives.

So does there exist a loophole in the LW monthly return system so that planes going for repairs at depots were not recorded in the Abgang as they were to arrive back at the same unit? And only those planes which were damaged enough or for some other reason were sent for higher level maintenance center were actually transferred and therefore appeared in the Abgang category of monthly returns?


Regards,
Kari