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Old 6th March 2005, 17:01
Christer Bergström Christer Bergström is offline
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Thank you veey much for that, Andrew! I wish all posts were that clean, fact-oriented, and source relating as your post! Your post should be viewed as a model for us all.

So now we know - there were almost four Allied fighters shot down for every Luftwaffe fighter which the Allies managed to shoot down. Of course an effect of the German "super veteran" fighter pilots, who were totally superior to the Allied pilots. If we bring in other aircraft than fighters, we will find that the German fighter pilots in reality managed to shoot down maybe five (or perhaps even more?) aircraft for every loss which they sustained themselves in air combat. (Do you have those figures, Andrew?) Quite interesting, if we consider the relation during the Battle of Britain of Luftwaffe total losses to air combat and RAF Fighter Command losses to air combat - which were far from as good as the Luftwaffe fighter unit records in Tunisia in January 1943. What else than superior German fighter pilots can explain that?

Just one more piece of information which I found:

In "The 9th Air Force in World War II", Kenn C. Rusts gives the figures for US 57th FG's losses in in Tunisia January 1943: 26. (Rust, p. 25.)

I know - those losses probably are to all causes and can't be compared with the "destroyed in air combat only" figures which we gave above, but there's no harm in giving those figures. After all, we have the Luftwaffe figures down to even damaged in take-off accidents.

(PS: I am only trying to find actual facts. I have no bias at all. The German fighter pilots were on the average much better than the Allied pilots in Tunisia in January 1943. Let me say that I also think that The Allied fighter pilots were on the average much better than the German pilots at Normandy in June 1944. Sometimes, one side was better than the other side - that's nothing strange about that. We Swedes have always had one of the best ice hockey teams, but I can easily admit that there was one other nation's ice hockey team which always was better than our team.)
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All the best,

Christer Bergström

http://www.bergstrombooks.elknet.pl/