Hooton's Luftwaffe Loss Totals - request for clarification

[Paul Thompson]

Nick and Graham, thank you for your ideas!

Nick, your description of RL2 III/881 closely matches the layout of the Flugzeugbestand und Bewegungsmeldungen available on Michael Holm's website. Are they indeed the same or similar?

The gist of what both of you are saying seems to be that Ted Hooton's totals are most likely those for aircraft lost or damaged beyond repair, minus any which were eventually extensively reassembled. I've looked at my notes again and I've found that on page 213 of the same book Mr. Hooton describes a similar set of figures for the Eastern Front as relating to aircraft destroyed or severely damaged. I am guessing that this should mean aircraft sustaining 60% damage or greater according to the Luftwaffe classification and so you are right.

However, all of the above raises a couple of "global" questions. Did the Luftwaffe really lose such a large proportion of aircraft to non-combat causes? Is this an exception or the rule among the air forces of World War Two? I find myself at a loss to answer those.

I've reproduced the Mediterranean table below to show the magnitude of the non-combat losses. Nick, I hope it might also give you some idea of how the calculations were done, by giving more data to compare with any totals that you may have.

Table below:

Quarter Year EA Accident Ratio of EA to Accident
Q4 1942 423 489 0.87
Q1 1943 448 471 0.95
Q2 1943 677 461 1.47
Q3 1943 1114 578 1.93
Q4 1943 261 129 2.02
Q1 1944 458 162 2.83
Q2 1944 421 162 2.60