Clarification on how Luftwaffe losse are catgorized

[oquaig]

Hi everyone,

Let's say a group of bombers, fully loaded with bombs, is taking off from its home airfield but one of the bombers crashes on take off and the aircraft destroyed. Is this classified as an accident (non combat) loss? Or is it counted as a combat loss while on mission ? Is it classified as a sortie ?

Using the Coventry raid (Nov '41) as an example, I noticed that several aircraft crashed on takeoff or aborted immediately after takeoff. I was wondering how they were counted.


Thanks in advance
oquaig