I fear I’ll be « verbose » again because discussing this matter seriously in 2 lines is not possible but don’t worry (if at all) for it’s nearly the last time ; for explanations see
http://forum.12oclockhigh.net/showthread.php?t=55516
In one of the preceding posts we had a discussion on the credibility of 162 « certain » victories won by French fighters on Me 109s during the French Campaign (May 10-June 24, 1940). Williamson Murray, an excellent American historian, gives the figures of 169 lost in combat in May-June (including May 1-9) and 66 more lost in accidents (see W.M.’s book « Luftwaffe – Strategy for Defeat 1933-1945 », table III (numerical strength and various losses, etc.). Someone observed that 162 out of 169 Me 109s for French fighters leaves only 7 to other enemies, which of course is too few. I remarked that 169 combat losses is NOT CREDIBLE even though Murray is a very good man and very interesting but I feel he is much more active in theory, high above the clouds, than in concrete, low-level facts like daily losses in combat etc.
66 Me 109s lost in accidents would be 39 % of the combat losses, which hardly anybody can believe, I think. What’s more, Me 109s were involved in an extremely hard, very fierce air war in which their technical superiority (Me 109 Es only were used, no Bs, Cs or Ds any more in the battle area) made it possible for German fighter pilots to win very numerous victories (not as much as some people, in particular Germans and a few Frenchmen, claim, i.a in all too long victory tables, but very numerous indeed). This superiority was the result of a good design too (as a whole) but almost exclusively of a very powerful, excellent engine made by Daimler-Benz (DB 601), which featured fuel injection in the cylinders, a very significant improvement (this was in the pipe in France too with Hispano-Suiza engines which would have been used from about August on – not at all in the UK).
According to at least one German source which can be taken seriously albeit not believed blindly ("Der Spiegel") not 169 Me 109s or 235 (including accidents) were lost but 535 (without raising the total number of German losses including bombers etc.), which I deem much more credible and explains a lot of things. Perhaps it’s not exactly 535 but this doesn’t matter much for the reasoning right here.
As I remarked already in this same thread « superior » does not mean ”invincible”, not at all. Yes the 109s fought a lot and won a large number of real victories (many on helpless enemies like British bombers including the poor Fairey "Battles" and ”Blenheim IVs”, Gloster ”Gladiator” biplanes (belonging to Norwegian, Belgian and British air forces), various Allied recce and close recce AC and more, and many other German victories on various Allied fighters : Morane 406s, Hurricanes, Spitfires (in the 9 days of the Dunkerque operation only), Bloch 152s, Curtiss H-75s, even about 48 superlative Dewoitine 520s and miscellaneous types. Nobody can imagine that even a superior fighter could fight (mainly) two strong air forces – French and British – without sustaining heavy losses in combat, not to mention those destroyed (certainly several dozen) by return fire from Allied bombers and recce AC.
Yes the engine performance of Me 109s made them clearly better than all Allied fighters except Dewoitine 520s (which were used in non-negligible numbers, about 100 on average) and Spitfires, which in May-June 1940 were hardly engaged in higher numbers than the D.520s. Even during the Battle of Britain (roughly 2 months later) Spitfires were only about 1/3 of roughly 600 RAF fighters in spite of a strongly rising production in aircraft factories. I made the following remark already : yes most French AND BRITISH fighters including Hurricanes, Gladiators, Blenheim Is and Defiants, were clearly inferior as compared to the Me 109 but this does not mean « useless », « worthless » or « helpless ». Quite on the contrary : they shot down hundreds and hundreds and hundreds more of German aircraft of all kinds including several hundred Me 109s (and Allied AA made a contribution too). Dutch fighters, too, fought with great distinction just like Dutch AAA and Army units and they did shoot down quite a few « Huns ».
How many 109s exactly were destroyed in combat, that is a question, but according to myself certainly many more than
W. Murray’s 169, a doubtful figure found in German documents translated into American… 1,016 engaged 109s faced roughly 1,000 Allied fighters of acceptable quality even though most of them clearly were not as good as 109s. Of these 1,016 Me 109s a number had to be held back in Germany to protect the coasts and vital areas like Hamburg, Wilhelmshaven, Kiel, Berlin, the Ruhr region and more. How many were held back ? I can’t remember but we can find this figure in J. Prien’s volume 3 (JFV, purple series), in which the bases of all German fighter units are given (my copy is still in a box). I guess about 150 of these Me 109 Es were held back in the rear area. This leaves about 870 for the main battle area. Same thing for the Allied fighters, which had to protect some vital areas in the rear too.
Most people dealing with aircraft losses, or all of them, give the percentage of losses in accidents on the basis of total losses (combat + accidents) of which accidents are a part so let us do this here too.
For French fighter losses in combat and in accidents my only source at the moment is the book « Invisibles vainqueurs » (1991), by Paul Martin and publisher-historian Yves Michelet (Martin contributed, among other things, all statistics in this book) :
Fighter type / Lost in combat
including to Flak, excluding
losses on the ground (bombs…)
MS 406 123
MB 152 72
Curtiss H-75 55
Lost in accidents: 3 MS 406s, 7 MB 152s, 1 Curtiss H-75 1
So according to W. Murray (table III) Me 109 losses on operations were 235 including 66 in accidents (28 % of 235).
According to Paul Martin French fighter losses for the three mentioned types were 250 in combat plus 11 in accidents (11 is about 4.2 % of 261).
If the 109s really had such a high loss rate in accidents these fighters were terrible, or their pilots were. I believe none of these two explanations is correct. Conversely I don’t believe Martin’s accident figures, which I feel are much too low. Surely there were more accidents than that on the French side. I suspect that a large part of the French accidents was not registered : no documents availabe, O my God! How terrible not to have good documents on this. But I think yes, such documents exist in the French archive.
Provisionally I have no other possibility than making an evaluation, an educated guess. For Me 109s I guess about 10 % of all losses were accidents (air battles were very intensive and as a whole combat losses were high), which with Murray’s figures is 23 or 24. Let us say 24, which leaves 211 for combat losses including to Allied AA and rear-gunners, together about 20 % at most, which is approximately 11, leaving about 200 to Allied fighters (95 %). Obviously all these figures are rough evaluations. I hope I’ll be able to refine them in the future but even as they are today they give a much more realistic picture of the whole. 200 Me 109s lost to Allied fighters is much more like it (not to mention about 508, which is 95 % of « Der Spiegel’s » total figure of 535 ; 90 % of 535 would be 482). According to me approximately 500 Me 109s shot down by Allied fighters could be too high a figure but it is much closer to reality than 200 or even than 95 % of Murray’s 169, which is 161! A more realistic assessment would be near 450, taking AA and rear-gunners into account.
This particular research is not finished but I am quite confident that it will be possible to come very close to reality, possibly in the next weeks or months. Take care.