Luftwaffe fighter losses in Tunisia

[Juha]

Hello Christer
some of those 156 were shot down by ground fire, IIRC for example the 6 Sqn alone lost surely more than 4 Hurricane IID tank-busters to ground fire, and probably the Italians got at least a few kills, so if LW lost appr. 62 fighters in air combat, so JGs exchange rate was probably only some 2 kills to one loss.

One reason for this worsening exchange rate was of course Allies growing numerical superiority, but probably those at first inexperienced Allied units had learned something. It would be nice to know if the Desert AF got better results against Axis than was that NW African AF in Tunisia in fighter combat.

On the superiority, according to Playfair et al in SE the DAF plus USAAF units there had 535 fighters, fighter bombers and tank-destroyers (Hurri IIDs) plus over 200 bombers plus the equivalent of 3 air recon sqns and to top of that all B-25s and B-26s of NASAF (less 2 B-25 anti-shipping sqns) were made available for the 20. and 21.3.43. Against this LW had on 20.3. 129 a/c in southern Tunisia of which 83 were serviceable and there seems to have been about 40 Italian a/c fit for operations.

If we assume that the serviceability of Italian planes was alittle bit lower than that of Germans, we had some 200 Axis planes vs those 535 fighters, fighter bombers and tank-destroyers plus the equivalent of 3 air recon sqns, that is probably appr. 580a/c plus bombers. Axis also had bombers on call deeper rear, in Sicily, in Sardinia and in Italian mainland but probably fewer and then there were USAAFs heavy bombers.

I must stop now
Juha

Ps Thanks for those RA OoBs