Eastern vs Western Front (was: La-7 vs ???)

[Don Caldwell]

Ruy --

Although Groehler's article contains a lot of data in 23 tables, these are in wildly inconsistent formats, and only the data from Sep 43-Oct 44 can be split out both by aircraft type and by Luftflotte, so that's what I used for my own table. I'm disappointed that I couldn't include that period in my table, but we live with what we've got. However, it should be obvious to anyone that losses on the eastern front from mid 1941-mid 1943 far exceeded those on the western front, because that's where most of the fighting was happening.

WRT your other points:

1. In 1944-45 few JG 26 pilots survived their first five missions. After that, survival was a matter of "luck", which of course eventually ran out for most of them. I don't know if these data are available for other units, but I see no reason for the overall trend to be any different, except that the loss/sortie ratio on the western front (in 1944) was almost 8 times as great as that for the eastern front, so the overall odds of survival in the west were much lower.

2. I see no point in trying to compare the Western Allies to the VVS. They were fighting altogether different wars, which both won. The Western Allies unquestionably were superior overall both qualitatively and (especially) quantitatively to the Luftwaffe in 1944-45, despite the Luftwaffe's having a handful of superior aircraft (Me 262s) and a few "super" pilots such as Grislawski who never got tired. The quantitative superiority of the VVS to the Ostfront Luftwaffe is also not questioned; qualitatively, I think the question is still open, which was the original point of this over-long thread.

Don