NSFK Losses ?

[Merlin]

Steve,

in the two known GQM listings only aircraft belonging to the Luftwaffe are included.

The NSFK was a para military organisation, all their aircraft have had civil registrations. These were not included in the GQM listings. The same applies for example to Lufthansa aircraft.

Until mid of 1939 registrations removed from the civil register were published in the monthly publication "Nachrichten für Luftfahrer". But this is only a list of registrations without any details for the reason. I've found no gliders in these lists.

[Marcel Hogenhuis]

Hello Steve, Larry and Merlin,

Enclosed all references to NSFK losses/accidents, taken from the RL 2 III 769-780 GQM listings. Whether these reports do obey the assumed rule that NSFK losses were not recorded in the GQM listings, is beyond my knowledge: I just present the data taken from the GQM listings 'Verluste bei den Schulen und sonstige Verbände'.

Have fun! Best regards, Marcel

[Larry deZeng]

Hi Marcel,

There are just 38 listed for the entire July 1942 to July 1944 period? This leads me to think that these 38 listings were inserted by accident because someone was careless or forgot that they were supposed to be reported in a separate loss list as noted by Merlin, above. Almost certainly, and I think we can all agree on this, that over the course of the war the NSFK pranged hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of gliders! Another possibility is that these 38 were all 100% write-offs and the remaining hundreds and hundreds were damaged and salvageable and thus did not get reported?

L.

[Steve Coates]

This is interesting because this represents misreporting as well as misrecording. It's clearly nothing like the totality of the losses as there's not a single fixed wing aircraft amongst this lot.

As I mentioned in my earlier posting, the 1944 Flugzeugbestand listing contain information on numbers of fixed wing aircraft operated by the NSFK as well as detailing numbers of flights and hours of air time so activity was still quite high but absolutely bugger all for gliders. I don't know that we'll get to the bottom of this but it's certainly got me intrigued.

[Marcel Hogenhuis]

Hello Larry and Steve

Thank you for the comments. We don't disagree about that these 38 can't be the total of NSFK losses over such al long time and indeed, misreporting/misrecording could be an explanation for this.

To be more specific: those 38 were the NSFK related accidents/losses among about 300 glider accidents/losses in total, taken from the GQM lists. Even those 300 is a very low figure, compared to the fleet of German gliders in the Third Reich.

Unfortunately, lack of time prevents me to put more effort in this subject, I am very busy with other projects.

All the best, Marcel