"Bruchlandung" and "Notlandung" - combat losses or not ?

[kolya1]

Hello,

I've got a question for anyone familiar with german loss records, there are a relatively large number of belly landings (often whithout more precisions) indicated for German combat units, and I wondered whether they are separated among caused by the enemy and accidental...

I read that belly landings caused by combat damage were reported but listed as accidents, was this really a common phenomenon ?

Thanks,

Kolya.

P.S. : Does anybody know whether the german Verlusteliste are available for remote acces, or reproduced somewhere on the net, or if one has to go to personnally go to the Bundesarchivs and ask for access ?

[ArtieBob]

Based on a quick look at my Ju 88 spreadsheet, both types of causes could be listed as a result of enemy action, if they were ultimately the result of Flak damage , air combat, etc. How consistent the reporting was with different units is difficult to judge, but certainly a crash or belly landing was not automatically shown as a non-combat loss.

Best Regards,

Artie Bob

[Andreas Brekken]

Hi.

The Bruchlandung and Notlandung reasons of combat losses are quite often followed by additional information. In addition, the flight category is often indicated as either a Feindflug or a Heimflug, which roughly translates to operational and non-operational flight.

In my database, there are a whole list of different loss reasons that are subtypes of Bauch-, Not- or Bruchlandungen, and I would tend to agree with ArtiBob that as the unit filed the loss record, it would not only be unit but also person dependent how much detail was included (I have read a couple of thousand Namentliche Verlustemeldungen, and the diversity on the clerk work of the units is rather high.......)

In the directions given by the RLM through the Luftflotten to the units it is clearly stated that it is especially important to state if the accident, crash or what ever was caused by enemy action, and thus a report stating only Bruchlandung or Bauchlandung should be a non-combat loss.

I would guess there are several errors or misfilings here, and that would be a part of the equation. But the number of landings outside of standard procedure should also in a high degree be reconned as correctly being non-combat losses, most of them to some kind of technical failure or human error.

In conclusion - one will probably never know is this or that emergency landing was caused by enemy action, and the chance is rather high that technical failure would be an important contributor in any case.

Regards,
Andreas

[Tomislav Haramincic]

Hello,

I agree wirth Artie, both Bruchlandung and Notlandung can be caused by combat or non-combat reasons.
I am more interested in the place where a Bruch/Notlandung happened. In my opinion a "Bruchlandung" (crashlanding) could only happen in the near vicinity of or at an airfield. A "Notlandung" (emergency landing), on the other hand, could happen everywhere. According to my theory a crashlanding is a direct result of a pilot error, system/engine failure, combat... in the landing phase. An emergency landing is caused also by the above mentioned reasons, but in the flight phase.

Has anybody found any german documents that could exactly define this terms?

regards,
Tomislav

[Nick Beale]

An entry in the Gen.Qu. 6. Abt. loss lists will usually say Bruchlandung or Notlandung "inf." something, meaning "following" or "as a result of". That is an indication of whether it's a simple accident or combat damage.

[robert]

Hi,

"inf" means infolge = due to...
There was also "Bauchlandung" - belly-landing.

Regards

Robert

[kolya1]

Ok, thank you very much.

As I didn't know, if the cause of the incident was not mentioned, which happens in a significant number of cases, and if it has a significant consequence (like more then 30-40 % damage) I used to consider it "suspect"...

The other problem was when causes like "engine damage" or "engine problem" are mentioned, the cause of the problem is not always easy to establish, especially since english translations of german reports seems to sometimes confuse these expressions...