Allied AC loss in all fronts

[Jim Oxley]

I do John. I gather from your comment that you don't have a problem accessing the info?

Guess I'll just have to keep trying.

[Andrey Dikov]

Regarding Il-2 pilots/gunners loss ratio.

7:1 is just one of the modern myphs. In fact losses of pilots and gunners were roughly equal, as you can see in Soviet loss records.

[Boomerang]

Re my earlier post and the questions from Jim:

Does that source also provide loss figures for Fleet Air Arm and the RAF in the Pacific?

Unfortunately the answer is no to both questions. The 1945 Jane's includes a section on the RAF's South-East Asia Command, but this is a narrative of operations in 1944/5 that lacks loss data. There is also a section on the Fleet Air Arm, this again is a narrative covering 1944/5 ops without loss data.

Jane's does devote several pages to the Royal Australian Air Force. These state that, as of 31 December 1944, the RAAF had suffered 8,264 casualties in Europe, the Middle East and Canada, including 4,525 killed and 4,845 casualties in the South-West Pacific, Far East and China-India, including 2,352 killed.

[John Beaman]

Originally Posted by Jim Oxley

I do John. I gather from your comment that you don't have a problem accessing the info?

Guess I'll just have to keep trying.

No, I do not have any trouble opening it. If you do not have Adobe Acrobat in a recent version, say 6, you might have a problem. There is a free download, but I do not have the link.

[kolya1]

Hi,

I've got two questions, in order to clarify the picture :

Does anybody know wether scrapped or dumped aircrafts (not because of combat damage but simply because of the "wear and tear factor") were included in western allied non-combat losses ?

And, second question : are the "losses in Europe" including the Mediterranean front (North Africa, Italy, the Balkans,...) ?

Thanks,

Kolya.

[Laurent Rizzotti]

I doubt any air force wil count a scrapped aircraft (that is without enemy action) as a loss. If you want to include them, the best formula wil be:

aircraft at start of the war + production/buys during the war - aircraft at end of the war - aircraft given/sold/returned to other countries = total losses (op losses, non-op losses and scrapped).

Of course for each of the four categories above you will find conflicting numbers....

As for the number given above, the 1945 RAF figures are probably only for "ETO", that is Western Europe, as all the commands listed were based here. These figures are also too low IMOO to include losses of non-op commands, or even non-op losses, and are even underestimating the op losses of Bomber Command, for example.

Chorley is a more modern source for Bomber Command losses and the figures he gave for the whole war are:
Operationnal squadrons: 12 330 losses (11 079 ops, 1099 non-op, 152 ground)
OTU & Flights: 2 279 losses (216 ops, 2 009 non-op, 54 ground)
Conversion Units: 904 losses (28 op, 847 non-op, 29 ground)
Miscellaneous units rattached to Bomber Command (described with the HCU tome) : 371 losses

So for the Bomber Command alone, the total is around 15 880, + 60% compared to the 1945 figures cited above. And not counting the British bombers operating in MTO or India, that were not part of the Bomber Command.

IMOO that is the best way to find the real numbers, identifying each loss and then doing the sum. Needless to say it is neither quick nor easy, but we are lucky some people did that for at least a part of the airforces involved in WWII.

[kolya1]

The soviets were listing worn-out and scrapped aircraft as non-combat losses, but AFAIK they were the only nation to do so...

If you look at the repartition of losses in the second part of the war, most losses were "non-combat losses", and most of these were of older types retired from service, which would also explain why "non-combat" losses climbed markedly from 1943 : the planes built in the beginning of the wartime mass production programs (e.g. : in 1942) were arriving at the end of their useful life...