Lw-losses without enemy actions!

[Andreas Brekken]

Hi, Jörn

I understood that, and tried mostly to explain what kind of figures we both are quoting, and tried to make some of the others aware that this kind of information must at least be treated with caution coming from a published source.

Also, I totally agree, the numbers are very high. I have as You know been working with the summary losses of the Luftwaffe for a while, the DVD will be sent you saturday btw, and done a bit of analysis on these.

JG 5 is of course what I analyzed first for some peculiar reason, and the numbers are striking!

Of the 1278 aircraft losses recorded by the JG 5 from January 1942 through January 1945, only 38.1% was recorded as being due to any kind of enemy action (this includes ground attacks (3.6%), aircraft missing to unknown reasons on operative flights (10.4%) etc), while the rest, 61.9% were damaged and destroyed due to non-enemy action (mostly take-off and landing accidents).

I would be very surprised if this is not the case in the other fighter units also (the data I have already gathered points in that direction... will come back on this). So, a 40/60 split is realistic, thus a fair bit more than half the aircraft that were destroyed or damaged in the Luftwaffe fighter arm were in fact destroyed by the Luftwaffe themselves.....

Regards,
Andreas