KG51 losses on 23 August 1942.

[Reiner]

Hallo Nikita!

Do you look for a photo of major Ernst Freiherr von Bibra? In “Luftwaffe im Focus” Edition No.12 page 19 (ISBN 978-3-9811042-4-0) you can find a picture from him!

Rene

[Franek Grabowski]

Igor nicely put the problem of GQ6 records. Such statistical data indeed serve long term planning purpose on every possible aspect, not only longevity of an airframe. Based on such data, the one may note that some types are dangerous, that aircraft built at some factories suffer higher losses, that some extra training is necessary for flying personnel, etc. In effect, safety, serviceability and combat efficiency may be improved.
From this point of view, it is really not that important if the date or the time of the loss is accurate. Accuracy of those records depended on distance from Berlin as well, and some units kept their own standards of information send. It is obvious eg. checking GQ6 returns for the BoB.
Assumption that they are accurate must be supported by some other means rather than someone's belief. Unfortunately, we do not have too many sources that allow us to compare data.
I am fully awared of overclaim and friendly fire incidents, but there is a slight but substantial difference between critical approach and ignoring Allied sources. Sorry, if a German airman is reported by several witnesses to bail out (or better, photographed), and still not listed by GQ6, then I really have no reason to trust the papers. The same for NVMs, my friend was wounded, but then still not appears in those lists. How many were omitted this way?
I am not neglecting the source as a whole, but please, do not consider this a definite list of losses.

[Pawel Burchard]

Originally Posted by Nikita Egorov

Officialy only two planes one from 9/KG55 and another from stab I/St.G77 were reported as jagerbeschuss.

Nikita, according to III./K.G. 55 KTB only He 111 H 6 (7401) G1 + DT was lost on 23/Aug/1942, it was hit by Flak and later finished up by fighters.

regards,
Pawel

[Andreas Brekken]

Hi, all

The only thing I have stated and others with me is that the GenQu 6 Abt loss lists IF units did their job, and IF no records were lost due to enemy action, technical problems or other reasons SHOULD HAVE BEEN COMPLETE.

Franek dismiss them as statistical data - have you ever seen or worked with these lists at all?

What I have been trying to get to, and probably will continue to do with parties more interested in getting data out than flogging their own horses (or making politics out of it), is that we cannot, in any instance just assume that the typical 'but some guy in an infantry regiment say that he saw this aircraft being shot down and thus since he was from the soviet or western allied forces this must be what happened'.

Please submit the name, rank, unit and date of the incident for your friend Franek, and we will see what we can find. There are several sources to look at if one wants to.

The idea of these lists are entirely clear, as stated in the wartime documents covering their use and the formation of them from an archivist point of view - the lists we have are MENT to be complete. They are not - due to reasons we already have covered.

My best tip is then to do like a lot of people have done for years - don't assume them to be entirely complete - ( but at least they make a data foundation that in any statistical means wouls be considered as significant) and try to clear the cases you discover that have discrepancies by using other sources! And they are there! In most occupied territories, maybe with the exception of the former Soviet union, there are local police reports, town histories, remnants in museums etc etc etc. Harder to find and requires work, but it is possible in many cases to add to the story we already have, or find new information if it is there.

And if the russian government havent been able to hide it entirely in their new archive system for the great patriotic war, the former NKVD reports on downed enemy aircraft should be available to researchers.

OK, got other stuff to do now, but I do believe that the best way to move forward is to stop discussing if the data we already have is more or less complete, and try to do an effort to complete the picture with relevant data.

Regards,
Andreas B

[Franek Grabowski]

Andreas
It is not making politics, just a warning that every such documents by definition are prone to errors, and whenever possible, should be cross-checked. This is understandably quite hard, as there are no daily flying and servicing logs for German units nor even Form 541 equivalent.
I have seen excerpts of some periods of GQ6 lists, and generally they do not impress me too much. I have several Polish AF documents, partially doubled by RAF ones, and assuming that the bureaucracy is similar (especially as there were several ex-German/Kaiser army people in Poland), I see several fields for possible gaps.
I do not know if your database allows that, but it would be interesting to compare eg. numbers of losses combined with personnel, total losses without any injuries, and damages for units operating in the same general area. Eg. it was my impression that there were substantial differencies between reports of various Luftwaffe units during the BoB. There are some cases, where it seems reports were send in batches and misfiled under wrong dates (so well known for all Form 78 fans).
You say that the one must be extremely careful with observations of Allied servicemen. Indeed, but they should not be dismissed as a whole. One case that comes to my mind is on 3 May 1942. During Circus 154-4 Northolt Wing clashed with II/JG26. In ensuing combat two parachutes were seen, one of them was no doubt the solitary loss of the Wing, thus the other one must have been German, but it is not reflected on any losses known to me. There are some more similar cases. By the way, it is noticeable, that during the Spring of 1942, there are not too many loss returns of German airmen bailing out.
Oh, and the one must be careful with ground reports too. I have a ROC message stating that two Me 109s crashed in 1940, while actually they were not!
In regard of my friend, apart of his account, I have a relevant page from his log book. I need to dig it out from my archive, not to provide wrong data. I have a Wast excerpt provided by him, and he is not listed among the losses, despite his wounds that postponed his service for few months.

[Nikita Egorov]

Rene and Pawel,

Thank you very much for info!

Andreas,

Let me correct you. Lots of reports on downed German planes were issued not by NKVD, but by different comissions that visited crash sites, starting from regimental staff personel to different technical man and others. Although it was a major task of security officers. The later are by now secret and the first can be found in open documents. Thus, I see reports on Volkmann and Kuhn from III/JG3 that landed and their planes captured without any damage, Hans Hahn, Beerebrock, etc.

[Andreas Brekken]

Hi, Franek

There are daily flying logs for German units, on several levels (airfield logs, unit KTB's, commanding units KTB's, liason officer operations listings etc etc etc). The problem is that a vast amount of this documentation was lost during the war, and that (probably) a vast amount of it is still misplaced or misfiled in different archives both in Germany and in the allied occupying forces home countries.

In addition, a lot of files were both destructed (the Luftwaffe seems to have been better at this than especially the Kriegsmarine) close to the end of the war, while other files were simply destroyed due to enemy action (during the air raid I mentioned before, when a storage facility of the war history department was hit by bombs, this basement that was partially destroyed, contained amongst other items: 20000+ files form Legion Condor, 87000+ files from operational units).

Look at the WASt files for JG 5, several of them have burned edges due to the fact that these files were damaged due to bomb inflicted fires.

I think we should come to some kind of consensus on this, and accept that we have documents that are as good as they possibly could be given the circumstances, and try not to hammer each other on the head in a political battle, but rather try to clear any discrepancies by providing documentation for each other in thos cases.

Regards,
Andreas B

[Franek Grabowski]

Andreas
To make my point clear, I do believe that all losses must have been noted somewhere at the time. I perfectly know that many, if not most of the records were destroyed. The problem is that the best and somewhat only source, GQ6 list is by definition prone to errors, and should be taken with a grain of salt. That is all.
Please note, that it is often used as a definite source of information, without any attempt to verify it with other sources generated at different level/place, which would not multiply the same information (eg. not GQ6 monthly sheets that will likely repeat all errors from the main list). There are some cases worth notifying as obvious errors.
16 October 1940 - a He 111 of 2./KGr126 is reported as 6955 1T+BB, but recovery of the remains proven it was 5709, while wartime RAF records noted it as 5706 1T+LK!
23 June 1941 - Fw. Bock of 4./JG2 is listed by GQ6 as lost near Ostend, but WASt says Condette near Boulogne, some 100 km away!
Of course, they were quite easy to verify, but what to do if we cannot find any evidence? Please, have another example. On 8 April 1942 Ofw. Gerhardt was reported wounded in combat over St Omer, despite no claims filed by Fighter Command. Of course this could be just another friendly fire incident, but another scenario comes to my mind. On 4 April a Polish pilot saw a German pilot shooting down a Spitfire, attacked him from close distance and claimed destruction. The pilot, just a few days earlier, has proven himself as one of the best marksmen in the whole Fighter Command, so the one should not expect him to miss. No German pilot was killed on 4 April, so his claim should be present on the victory list. That happens, Ofw. Gerhardt was among the latter. Would it be possible that the loss report was badly filed? How to verify it?
Another case. 9 April 1945, Hamburg. A Lancaster raid is intercepted by I&III/JG7. An account provided in an appropriate Luftgau report fits perfectly description of combat but one thing - no losses were filed. To the contrary, I have a Fighter Command paper noting, that on a review of gun camera film of one pilot (unfortunately, the film itself was not located), it was noticed that a bailing out airman with properly deployed parachute is visible. So what happened actually?
Finally, for the Grosse Schlag operation, Galland estimated loss of 2,6 aircraft destroyed per pilot killed. This must have been a result of some statistical analysis. It certainly does not fit the losses for 1941 the Channel clashes, where the ratio is about 1,2. So, was the estimation bogus, or perhaps the latter stats are wrong, as 1,2 is way off 2,6!
PS Please do not refer to politics. It is not the case.

[odybvig]

"16 October 1940 - a He 111 of 2./KGr126 is reported as 6955 1T+BB, but recovery of the remains proven it was 5709, while wartime RAF records noted it as 5706 1T+LK"

So no we cant trust RAF record either ?


"On 4 April a Polish pilot saw a German pilot shooting down a Spitfire, attacked him from close distance and claimed destruction. The pilot, just a few days earlier, has proven himself as one of the best marksmen in the whole Fighter Command, so the one should not expect him to miss. No German pilot was killed on 4 April, so his claim should be present on the victory list. That happens, Ofw. Gerhardt was among the latter. Would it be possible that the loss report was badly filed? How to verify it"

Another possebility is that the german A/C was not destroyed and limped back to base. Was the claim verified ? By whom ?

"Another case. 9 April 1945, Hamburg. A Lancaster raid is intercepted by I&III/JG7. An account provided in an appropriate Luftgau report fits perfectly description of combat but one thing - no losses were filed. To the contrary, I have a Fighter Command paper noting, that on a review of gun camera film of one pilot (unfortunately, the film itself was not located), it was noticed that a bailing out airman with properly deployed parachute is visible. So what happened actually"

What have this to do with the GQ6 list

"Finally, for the Grosse Schlag operation, Galland estimated loss of 2,6 aircraft destroyed per pilot killed. This must have been a result of some statistical analysis. It certainly does not fit the losses for 1941 the Channel clashes, where the ratio is about 1,2. So, was the estimation bogus, or perhaps the latter stats are wrong, as 1,2 is way off 2,6"

And your sources for this info is ?


Olve Dybvig

[Franek Grabowski]

I did not know that your name is Andreas!

Originally Posted by odybvig

So no we cant trust RAF record either ?

I would say it another way - belief that any document may be an absolute truth could be dangerous. Nonetheless in this case you are detracting from the problem of quality of German documents.

Another possebility is that the german A/C was not destroyed and limped back to base. Was the claim verified ? By whom ?

I doubt that top sharpshooter of FC would miss from 25 yards.

What have this to do with the GQ6 list

Perfectly nothing but the fact, that there are really weird documents.

And your sources for this info is ?

Galland and own calculations.