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

[Christer Bergström]

if I read the Soviet table correctly, a real kill ratio would seem to depend greatly on the actual fate of the large category "did not return from sortie".

This is the problem which faces anyone who tries to make any deeper research into such topic: There simply are no 100 % reliable figures of the kind you want. One reason why the Soviets used the category "MIA" is because the exact cause of the loss could not be established. The Eastern Front was different than the US air operations over Germany, where there often were hundreds of eye witnesses to the shootdown of a certain B-17. (And even regarding US 8th Air Force there were cases where losses were erroneously attributed to Flak simply because no one saw the rapidly attacking German fighter.)

So if you are looking for a 100 % complete list which contains the exact reason to every single Soviet aircraft loss, I'm afraid you are looking for some kind of unfindable Holy Grail - which you will never find (whatever Dan Brown says). So you have to try to analyse what there is, and draw your own conclusions. That's the approach of a historian, contrary to the approach of a medium-level matematician (or a bureaucrat).

Sometimes people tend to overemphasise statistics, thus forgetting that in order to analyse statistics, a certain amount of understanding is necessary. The truth can't always be easily found in a single column of figures.

Yes, I think it is a matter of understanding before one tries to evaluate various figures.

I have covered the general subject which you discuss - which boils down to comparative standards between German and Soviet fighter pilots - in the narrative texts in Classic's series "Jagdwaffe":

Vol. 3, Section 2: "Barbarossa"
Vol. 3, Section 4: "The War in Russia Jan - Oct 1942"
Vol. 4, Section 3: "The War in Russia Nov 1942 - Dec 1943"
Vol. 5, Section 2: "War in the East 1944 - 45"

Of course I examine this even deeper in my "Black Cross/Red Star" series (where Vol. 3, covering the period June - Nov 1942, will be published this summer), but since you are interested in the last year of the war, I can only suggest that you go to Jagdwaffe Vol. 5, Section 2: "War in the East 1944 - 45".

Maybe one should not recommend one's own books, but to defend myself I can say that I have already received my full payment for the Jagdwaffe series, and will not earn more through more sales. Also, I don't know if there are any other books where any attempts have been made to analyse the phenomenon you are interested in.

One start could be this article:

http://www.bergstrombooks.elknet.pl/bc-rs/text.html

All best,

Christer Bergström

PS: "Do you doubt the German figure because Soviet claims were much higher"

Well. . . please re-read what I wrote: "Official figure of German fighter losses attributed to enemy action on the Eastern Front in 1944: 972. The incomplete Generalquartiermeister loss records for 1944 list 529 Bf 109s for JG 52 alone (1944 only). Of course this number includes aircraft with damage degrees above 10 %, and due to all reasons, but it must also be kept in mind that it is far from complete."

- Maybe I wasn't clear here, but JG 52 constituted only a small part of all Luftwaffe fighter units which saw action against the Soviets in 1944. (The other were JG 5, JG 11, JG 51, JG 53, JG 54, and JG 77, to which should be added the elements of various SGs which flew fighter missions on the Eastern Front in 1944.)