Summarische Verlustmeldung vs. Bestandsmeldung

[Andreas Brekken]

Hi, Norbert & Nick.

I have also tried to do this for a few units. And as Nick said, the correspondance between the Bestandsmeldungen and Summarische Verlustemeldungen might seem poor....

What we do have to do here however is to establish:

1. Who did the different tasks with regards to these two important document sets? (The Summarische Verlustemeldungen were made at the Genst.Gen.Qu. statistics department)

2. When did the month close (and start) for the Bestandsmeldungen?

3. (most important in my opinion) What would happen to make an aircraft to be counted as an Abgang in the Bestandsmeldungen, and what would not? An aircraft damaged 10% and listed in the Summarische Verlustemeldungen would in my opinion not be counted as an Abgang as long as the unit did not have to transfer the aircraft to another unit for repairs to be carried out (I have examples in documents from repair facilities were some aircraft are stated with HALTER given as the original unit while others are 'transferred' and the HALTER given as the repairshop itself (or a Luftfeldpark or similar). And to complicate things further - it is not necessarily certain that the different units technical personnel acted consistent on this matter, even if the routines were clear!

Thus - depending on the circumstances (and probably also which airfield the unit currently operated from with regards to facilities available there) - an aircraft could be in both the Abgang list and in the Summarische Verlustemeldungen, but it could also be only in the Summarische Verlustemeldungen list....

The only real intriguing question is then - if there are a lot of aircraft in the Abgang of the Bestandsmeldungen - but no aircraft lost according to the Summarische Verlustemeldungen.....

So to try to conclude as of now (we will probably never be able to establish more than a good theory on this - even with the documents on the way to me know which should contain the instructions for loss reporting in the WWII Luftwaffe):

As long as the number of aircraft reported in the Summarsiche Verlustemeldungen are larger than the number in the Abgang in the Bestandsmeldungen - no worry. If the situation is vice versa - look to see if the unit could have been reporting as several separate ones - if not - probably a clerical error....

Regards, and a Merry Christmas to all of You!

Andreas