Announcement of Luftwaffe Losses by OKW?

[Boomerang]

Gentlemen:

Thank you for those very informative replies. It looks as if there are some very good primary sources to throw further light on this issue.

One can speculate that, in the absence of quantitative official information on Luftwaffe losses, the German population learnt to read between the lines.

Cheers

Boomerang

[bulldog]

Boomerang,
The other obvious evidence of casualties were the number of women in mourning. This was one practice the Party could not prevent.
Regards Bulldog.

[Nick Beale]

There's also this website http://www.denkmalprojekt.org/en.htm which is a project to create a searchable database of names on German war memorials.

I recently found the fate of a pilot I was interested in thanks to this site.

[rldunn]

Here a few examples of parts of OKW communiques.

2 Feb 42: "In the period from Jan. 24 to Jan. 30 the Soviet Air Force lost 164 planes of which 94 were shot down in air combat, thirteen by anti-aircraft fire and the remainder destroyed on theground. During the same period we lost 33 planes on the Eastern front."

7 Feb 42: "In air combat yesterday 34 Soviet planes were shot down or destroyed on the ground without loss to us."

15 Feb. 1942: "From 7 to 14 Feb. the Soviet Air Force lost 153 planes of which 88 were shot down in air battles, eight by antiaircraft fire and the remainder destroyed on the ground. During the same period 25 German planes were lost."

The New York Times is a handy source for full text translations of OKW communiques.

Rick