[kolya1]

Hi,

Elaborating on my last post about Soviet losses, I tried to guess what the human losses could tell us about possible material losses (If anyone has suggestions about the methodology, these are most welcome) :

Among the 261 killed, wounded, and missing VVS men, there were 44 NCOs and privates. If I am not mistaken, these can only be gunners (or possibly ground personnel), because at the time (this changed later), all operational pilots and navigators were officers.

Gunners were mostly used on 3-seat SB bombers. If all personnel losses were among flying personnel and the whole crew had the same fate (not realistic, but we will consider it so for the calculation's purpose), to these 44 presumed gunners must be added 88 other crewmembers. And thereafter 129 officers, presumed pilots remain among the losses. Which leads to 173 crews among killed, missing, and wounded (159 killed-missing, 102 wounded).

A number of aircrews must have parachuted to safety (some being among the wounded), planes have probably come back with casualties on board, and I don't know if some of the casualties were suffered on the ground,... So, it's absolutely impossible to draw definite conclusions without additional data, but for what that's worth, I'd consider the figures are compatible with a total loss of 205 airplanes. If the real figure is different, it shouldn't be very far from that.

Kolya.