Luftwaffe fighter losses in Tunisia

[Nash]

Nash, it says explicitly "shot down in air combat".

If it's a source intended for public consumption, you can't really assume that they are drawing that much of a distinction. Obviously if it gives losses to other sources as well, that's a safe assumption, but I'd expect any public announcement of losses to lump them all together.

Generally, the number of fighters pilot casualties were close to the number of shot down and destroyed fighters.

I am registered at the 1stJMA forum as Hop (and many other forums too, with "Nashwan" being my name at a couple of game sites). (No attempt at deception, I tried to register here with the name Hop but never recieved the confirmation email, and couldn't find a way to get it resent)

During one of the debates there about BoB casualties, where you claimed that the RAF really suffered around 1,800 fighters lost (iirc), I pointed out that that would mean almost 4 lost aircraft per pilot, which seemed oddly high. You responded that 4 lost aircraft per pilot was fairly normal, and was the same ratio the 109 units suffered.

I can see why during the BoB period the Germans would lose a disproportionate number of fighters per pilot, because British fighters of the period were armed only with MGs, which are more likely to cause damage than catastrophic failure, and many pilots might have been tempted to bail out rather than risk a channel crossing with smoking engine.

I can't see many reasons why the RAF fighter losses should have been so disproportionate to pilot losses though.