On assessing the degree of damage to aircraft in percentages

[Andrey Kuznetsov]

Hello,

Did the documents that directly explain how aircraft damage was assessed in percentages survive the war? If so, which ones?
I was hoping that this would be explained in L.Dv. 1000 (Dienstanweisung für die Einheiten der Luftwaffe im Kriege), but it turns out that it is not there.

Best regards,
Andrey

[Andrey Kuznetsov]

I reviewed the Bundesarchiv documents once again, which I thought might contain the answer to my question. Alas, to no avail.
Along the way, I found a lot of interesting things, in particular RL2-III/963, which Andreas Brekken quoted in 2014 during a discussion on our forum.

But the question remains. Is there really no description of how these percentages were calculated?


Best regards,
Andrey

[Alfred.MONZAT]

From a secondary source (so not exactly what you are looking for I know but I thought it might help), The Messerschmitt 210/410 Story by Jan Forsgren:
0-9% - Minor damage, which can be partlyrepaired by the unit's head mechanic
10-24% - Minor damage, repairable at unit level
25-39% - Major damage, requiring rebuild or repair at unit level
40-44% - Damage to engine or aicraft systems (e.g. electrical) requiring replacement at unit level
45-59% - Heavily damaged, but repairable by exchanging major components
60-80% - Written off, with minor components reusable
81-99% - Total loss over own territory
100% - Total loss, either over sea or enemy territory

[Andrey Kuznetsov]

Thank you, Alfred,

I know about this breakdown. The question is how these percentages were calculated and whether the documents describing this have been preserved. Since the damage percentages were calculated by each unit, there must have been a huge number of copies describing the calculation method. Has even a single copy been preserved?

Best regards,
Andrey

[Chris Goss]

I would think it was an engineering estimate carried out by qualified engineers

[Andrey Kuznetsov]

Hello Chris,

In any case, they had to be guided by some kind of document. If these were intuitive estimates, different in each unit, such statistics would not make sense.
One opinion is that these percentages are an estimate of the cost of the parts that need to be replaced relative to the cost of the entire aircraft. But I don't know what documents this opinion is based on.

Best regards,
Andrey

[Graham Boak]

It would also need the cost of the effort required to repair the aircraft, so this seems unlikely. I suspect the front-line units worked to some kind of simple rules. It would be interesting to know if the records showed many differing values or many examples of nice rounded numbers relating to the specific option.

[Andrey Kuznetsov]

Hello Graham,

The work carried out by the Luftwaffe repair units was nominally free of charge. But this is certainly not the case for repairs in Industrie. Of course, I don't know if the hypothesis about the calculation based on the cost of the aircraft is correct.

In any case, there should have been a calculation method on paper in the units.

Undoubtedly, in the quartermaster's documents, damage assessments were recorded rounded up to 5. In the original documents, one can sometimes find damage assessments of 14%, 29%, etc.

Best regards,
Andrey.

[Graham Boak]

Thanks. However even work done by the Luftwaffe repair units actually costs something. Down to the petrol in the trucks carrying the wreckage.

[Andrey Kuznetsov]

Of course, there were some material costs regardless of where the aircraft was repaired. But the unit could not know the full extent of future costs.
There had to be a simple calculation method known to all units, regardless of whether it was based on cost or some other method.