Luftwaffe combat sorties ratio West : East

[Andrey Kuznetsov]

Since the beginning of Barbarossa in 1941, in 1942 and 1944 most of the Luftwaffe's combat sorties were flown on the Eastern Front.

The fact that the centre of gravity of Luftwaffe operations in 1941-42 was in the East is apparently not disputed by anyone. The data for 1941 up to 9 November can be calculated from Ob.d.L Füst Ic reports, they survived the war and are available online (NARA and TsAMO).

The number of sorties in 1944 is known from Gen.d.Flieger Koller's papers - in AIR40/2423 in English. The original (RL 2 III/1198) is not yet available online, but tables based on these papers can be viewed here:
https://jager-dmv.livejournal.com/1368.html
The West:East ratio in 1944 was about 1:2.
In January 1945 this ratio was more than 1:3.5, in February 1:5, in the following months undoubtedly even more so.

In 1943 this ratio based on general considerations should have been even higher. Unfortunately, it isn’t clear if the whole 1943 can be checked. But the reports for 17.9-31.10.1943 survived the war and are available online (RL II 2/844, 845, 332, 333, 334). 31.10 was not completely included in these files, so only 44 days can be compared.

It was a very active time in the West including the Mediterranean. It was a time of Schweinfurt-2 and other large allied raids, significant activity of Luftwaffe in the battles for islands in the Aegean. In the East it was the time of a series of Soviet offensive operations after the victory in the Battle of Kursk. It is also significant that this was the time, to quote Williamson Murray's excellent book "... the Luftwaffe. Strategy for Defeat", "the eastern Luftflotten became the backwater of German efforts in the air".

I counted the number of sorties during this period, the West:East ratio was more than 1:2.8
These reports are not user-friendly, especially those concerning the West, one has to gather day-by-day data from several documents.

For part of the days in the East there are only preliminary reports and no final (more complete) reports, there may be some inaccuracies in the West as well, i.e. it is probably not an exact ratio, but it is obvious that with all possible refinements the ratio would be about the same.

In this case, it doesn't even matter if the ratio was 1:2 or 1:3. It is important to ask whether can be called a "backwater" for the Luftwaffe the front, on which in each of the years since the beginning of Barbarossa was a greater number of combat sorties than in all the western theaters combined.

Murray made his conclusions supported by losses data, and didn't take into account the number of combat sorties at all, as he apparently didn't know it. I wonder if his conclusions would have changed if he had known that.
He often used in his book the word “attrition”. I think the number of sorties has a direct correlation to attrition. Of course, the number of losses in the West for most of 1943 and in 1944 was higher than in the East, 1945 has to be talked about separately. I'm curious how much this is offset from the attrition point of view by high decommissioning due to wear and tear, high Abwurfmunition consumption, etc. Perhaps some conclusions about the planes on 1943-44 can be drawn based on Flugzeugbestand und Bewegungsmeldungeт. But it is very laborious.

It seems to me that this sortie ratio reflects the generally continental nature of WW2 in Europe and the need to support the troops on a front of immense length. The Germans could not neglect this need even when they began to have problems in the air over Germany itself.

Best regards,
Andrey

[Nick Beale]

Something else to look at from (say) Autumn 1944 onward: the statistics for fuel was being allocated between the different commands.

[Andrey Kuznetsov]

Hello Nick,

yes, that info would be very helpful. I wonder if the fuel allocation data for those months survived the war.

According to Koller's papers, in Dec.44 the ratio West : East more than 1.5 : 1. Apparently, this was the only or one of the few months when the number of sorties in the West was higher than in the East. This is probably due to the Ardennes offensive and to relative lull in fighting in the East in this case.

Best regards,
Andrey

[Johannes]

Hi Guys

Wouldn't like to comment on ratio of sorties, but certainly with claims they drop so much in the East during 1944, and increase so much in the west, then seem to reverse that trend in 1945.

Kind Regards

Johannes

[Nick Beale]

Originally Posted by Andrey Kuznetsov

Hello Nick,

yes, that info would be very helpful. I wonder if the fuel allocation data for those months survived the war.

Best regards,
Andrey

Yes,you can download Bundesarchiv files that have the 1945 figures (I can't give you a specific file reference at the moment) and also there are a few ULTRA intercepts from late 1944 onward.

[Andrey Kuznetsov]

Hello Nick,

thank you!
I'll see if I can find 1945. The data itself is interesting, but for 1945 it doesn't tell us anything about the ratio West:East, as at least from mid-January onwards part of the "Western" Luftwaffe was used in the East. Even the night fighters were used as ground attack planes.

1944 is interesting.
I don't know if some Lfl. Reich units were engaged in the East at the end of the year.

I corrected the December 1944 ratio in the previous post, as I missed the Reichsgebiet in my haste, sorry. The East:West ratio in December was more than 1.5:1. Given the offensive in the Addennes, this is not surprising.
In the other ratios (1944 as a whole and January-February 1945) the Reichsgebiet is accounted for.

Best regards,
Andrey

[Andrey Kuznetsov]

Hello Johannes,

Originally Posted by Johannes

Wouldn't like to comment on ratio of sorties, but certainly with claims they drop so much in the East during 1944, and increase so much in the west, then seem to reverse that trend in 1945

Thank you for the interesting remark. But in general the East is more about strike aviation than fighters.
In 1944 the proportion of fighter sorties to the total number of sorties was about 3/4 in the West and 1/5 in the East.

Best regards,
Andrey

[Andrey Kuznetsov]

Hello,

on fuel allocation:

ZA 3/358 Betriebsstoffversorgung, Verteilung der fliegenden Verbände auf die verschiedenen Fronten
and maybe ZA 3/266, 267 Betriebsstoffversorgung.

But none of them have been digitized yet.

Best regards,
Andrey