[Andreas Brekken]

Hi, all

Yes of course the GenQu 6 Abt loss records we know of are incomplete. The entire 1944, the part of the war with the heaviest losses are not available in the archives, most likely containing among other things hundreds or maybe thousand of corrections for 1943, 1942, 1941 for one thing.

Secondly - no matter how well a system was designed, in time of war things happen that you cannot control, and that will of course have an influence on the quality of the data...

Please Franek and other consistent critics of the quality of the data:

1. This was before the computer - even having top of the line databases is no assurance of getting EVERYTHING right

2. A lot of the information was sent via courier, or over radio transmission, often coded. (and thus would need to be decoded... additional errors could be introduced by a sloppy radio operator/encoder/decoder)

3. In a war people die or get wounded or freak out, and communications get destroyed. We can not say how many reports that went missing due to enemy action... a railroad car blown up can contain a lot of documents... and dead people are really bad at filling out reports

I think that some of you should stop whining about this and rather try to do some real research and come up with real and undisputable data on the losses you claim happened and that weren't recorded (wartime records with for example aircraft codes and Werknummer for german aircraft, ID badge numbers of crew, photographs from crash sites etc). And please try to do this for losses that should be covered roughly by the periods we have records of (I have examples of loss records filed TWO YEARS after the incident! Thus it is not unlikely that losses form 1943 could be contained in documents from 1945... after they stopped recording the summary losses.)

And please - some 'eyewitness' account stating that the reason for an aircraft crashing was enemy inflicted damage is not very hard evidence. As we have proven on this board time and time again for all parties in this large conflict: The human mind is NOT necessarily the best storage place for these memories made under a high level of stress now more than 60 years ago...

And of course, a pilot experiencing engine trouble would immediately know that this was due to AAA and not to for example over-revving in a dive... and of course the DB engines in the Bf 110 never overheated and never developed oil leaks of various origin.

And Franek, please do show us using copies of original wartime documents that the RLM did not use the documentation from the Statistics department (ie GenQu 6 Abt under different guises) to control the flow of aircraft to the frontline units, by means of their organization which was quite hierarchical - and in fact not only scrutinized by the clerks and what one could maybe call that times layer of bureaucrats in said department, but also by the historical department under Von Rohden.

Sadly most of the people from this office has died. Sad, because if some of you older guys had bothered to thoroughly research this issue some years ago, one would be able to interview them, and not just assume - I have the name, rank and birth date of every person that ever worked in the GenQu 6 Abt on file...

And how many really have investigated what happened to the files of the historical department? I have at least not seen any publication on this - but stumbled upon the reports relaying the actions of the historical department - even recording the registration numbers of the railroad cars used to transport the files out of Berlin and the number of and origin of files stored in the basement of a given address in Berlin and how several employees of the historical department were killed or wounded during an air raid on a given date.

I did not really mean to get fired up about this one more time... but I get really irritated by comments like yogybär's that he have 'heard' that the germans falsified their loss records. But he makes a fairly important point:

If you do not report your losses... how the fuck do you get replacements? Believe me, I've been in the 'system' that the armed forces can be called - and we couldn't even get a new pair of underpants without filling out a loss record, not to speak of ammunition or guns (hell if you couldn't account for those parts the whole barracks would be turned upside down and at one time we had to spend an entire night outside on the parade ground because some moron lost a clip on the way back from the shooting range) . And you imply that the GERMAN Luftwaffe would just send aircraft to a unit without getting some piece of paper stating WHY they needed it... dream on!

Regards, and as always I am trying to use a bit of humour and irony!

Andreas B