Response to Glider and Juha.

[Arsenal VG-33]

[quote]

Originally Posted by Juha

Hello VG
As much I’d like to have exact info, I don’t have, maybe nobody have because the high number of those which simply went missing, but losses in operations was 10759 – 109 destroyed by enemy on the ground + probably most of 807 lost by Naval units.

To resume we can agree that 11 500 - 12 000 Il-2 were lost or written off after combat damage due to ennemy action?

I just want to point out the fact that if everybody here shouted loud about horrendous shtormovik losses, no one was able to provide reliable data about them.

For instance

3rd May 2011, 20:41 MW Giles
The Ju87 had been shot out the sky and withdrawn from the action in the BoB. The Il-2 may have been wonderful, but they had been shot down in droves in the German advance into USSR which was still rolling eastwards (650+ Il-2, R-3, V-11 and ZKP-57s depending on what they called them claimed by Jagdwaffe by 30/6/42).

or

6th May 2011, 17:34Juha
Il-2 was interesting solution to CAS problem but if you look the Soviet losses in men and material in 44-45 and compared those to losses of Western Allies in ETO in 44-45 you can see that it wasn’t a magic weapon. One could not fight a cheap war against an army like WM.

Glider
As has been pointed out a large number of IL2's were shot down but the Finns who were on the receiving end of the IL2 noted that against pin point targets they were pretty ineffective due to a lack of accuracy.

or

7th May 2011, 01:36 Bill Walker
As revealed in Rastrenin's book, it took horrendous IL-2 losses before VVS Shturmovik units developed effective ground-

attack tactics. The book is replete with countless missions where poorly-trained IL-2 crews, usually without fighter escort, hurled themselves at Axis forces only to be slaughtered by flak and Luftwaffe aircrews."

or

7th May 2011, 18:00 Bill Walker
Juha, thank you for the Il-2 loss statistics. Pretty scary stuff. We need to remember that the Russians had the relative luxury of a single front war. Could the RAF have sustained fighter losses like this in western Europe, and still have fought in the Mediterranean and the Far East?

etc. So since no one answered to tvcolin

Tvcolvin 2nd May 2011, 05:01
But it's likely that there is no one in the West who can answer that question.
Perhaps someone in Russia has some of the answers?

I 'm giving the soviet (Perov & Rastrenin) stats.
one lost for combat 85 missions in 1944
one for 90 in 1945

I don’t have info on Shturmovik units but in fighter units also too high combat losses might mean hard times to the CO. One might try to alleviate the impact of high losses by inflating victories but if caught doing that, one would have been in deep trouble indeed. Life wasn’t easy under Stalinist system.

So you have now, it was 1:127 in 44, 1:194 in 1945 for fighters. Quite moderate even low, loss rate.

IMHO it is rather useless to compare Il-2 losses to US heavy bomber losses, their attack profiles were so different and heavy bombers spent so much more time in hostile airspace per sortie.

I agree with the opposite. Strategic missions were far less dangerous, the light AAA was devastating on small Il-2 formations flying low and slow. So were the german fighters. Amercan escort had the advantage of hight, speed and number...

I will add from myself, that real combat losses due to some arrengements between friends and other good old fellows ( to write of accidents as combat losses) were even lower. How many? I dont know but with air superiority and skilled krews it should not exceed 0,8%!

It's less than Mustang's loss rate and perfectly acceptable to RAF and USAF standards.

More fruitful comparison would be Il-2losses vs fighter-bomber losses

I wouldn't say that. Reading about Mustang attack missions over France and soviet Il-2 ones over russia it's quite different.
One was practicing "fire and escape" surprise attack carefully avoiding any flack position, the others were smashing it, to provide free ride to others shtormoviks. At high coast.
From Normandie pilots point of vue, a stormovik attack was looking like a "furious madness". Once target founded, Il-2 were attacking and attacking it again and ...again without any care to own losses and damaged it order to destroy it definitly until victorious issue or death...

Anyway a stormovik attackit was at least 3 passes, one for bombs, one for rockets, one other at least and often more for guns.

The result was simple, even on calm fronts was damaged by Flack all 4 missions. And knocked-off less than 10 ones. K'O' means sometimes written off in fact in 10% of the cases, but pilot was changing of plane.

3th army official statistic was even worse, one Il-2 was damaged by Flak every 2/3 sorties, the loss rate was 1 for 36 missions. I assume the fact that a written-off plane for the 3 VA is not always written off for the VVS: it could be transmitted to PARM's, or industry, be repeared at 2nd or 3rd maintenance echelon level and see combat later elsewhere.
Maybe combat effectivness was at that price?

I don't think a single P-47, Typhoon or anything else would survive in such combat conditions.


Regards