I have just written a new analysis of Luftwaffe resource distribution - it is on Michael Holm's website

[Andrey Kuznetsov]

Hello Dan,

thank you for the article. Some of statistic tables are interesting. I have some comments and questions.

As for your main thesis I can only repeat the question of Ruy Horta: “Did the results of your study lead you to your conclusions, or did you want to proof your point by using statistics?”
The problems of your article begin from the first sentence of the abstract: "German air force, a key component in the initial German victories during the Second World War".
Not a key component, but one of the components, not more.

But comments and questions:

1. Table 1. Allocation of Luftwaffe operational aircraft …, and following tables.

How you divide the units between “At the front” and “In reserve”? Maybe if you will list the units with allocation for the specific date (for example 10.Feb.43) your methodology will become clearer. Also distribution between Ostfront, Germany, West, Southeast, Mediterranean etc. more useful than the faceless “West”.
How and where you are counting Lfl.5?

For the estimation of comparable efforts the number of sorties is more important than allocation. Do you saw that data in BAMA? If not, for some large timeframes these data survived the war in the reports to Heeresgruppen, to armies etc.

2. Table 6. Allocation of German anti-aircraft guns and supporting equipment, December 1942.

About zero in the row “Heaviest guns (105-128 mm)”: I don’t have entire picture but in Kerch area in Jan.43 (and evidently in Dec.42) were two “heaviest” batteries: 105 mm 4./321 and 128 mm 1./Lehr u.Versuchsabt. If the data in other rows are likewise “correct” …

Also, Heeres-Flak and Flak units integrated in ground forces divisions etc are beyond this analysis. And the lion’s share of ground forces was in the East.

3. Table 9. Anti-aircraft batteries lost with all equipment, 1939 to July 1944

As you write correctly “Of course, losses of entire batteries exclude the many losses of individual guns during routine operations”. So the losses of “batteries lost with all equipment” have a questionable value for the analysis. But it is more important that the data seems doubtful, both for East and West.

In 1941-43 in the “West” (in Tunisia) were lost 19. and 20.Flakdivision. Some batteries probably were lost in Libya, maybe on Sicily and in 1940 in Narvik. But more than 150 batteries?
How many batteries were in Tunisia in May 1943 for example?

For the East: it seems that only Stalingrad is counted. But German army had retreated (partly in disarray) many times in 1941-43: from the outskirts of Moscow, from Caucasus, from Upper Don, from Orel-Kursk-Kharkov-Mius etc etc etc with heavy losses of all kinds of weapon. Some AA batteries were lost in the Kerch peninsula in Dec.1941 certainly during Soviet landing operation.

4. Table 11. Luftwaffe losses before and after 22 June 1941 …

For such inhuman phenomenon as the war the losses and their replacement is a normal process - as far as the replacement remain on the same or the higher level (quality and quantity) as the lost means of war and personnel. You probably know when the reduction of quality of the Luftwaffe crews began. It was certainly not before 22.Jun.41. In 1939-41 some crews were lost, but all other became more hardened. Green crews had a time to training due to great pauses between significant operations in 1939 - 1st half of 1941.

5. Table 12. Luftwaffe losses January to August 1942, by theatre of operations

Do you saw the following thread?
http://forum.12oclockhigh.net/showth...highlight=Chir
From the 98 planes captured after Stalingrad on the Chir station at least 68 planes are the total losses unknown from the German documents or known as repairable before the discussion about Chir finding. It isn’t singular known example. And how many such examples are not known yet …
So the statistics based on GQM returns is certainly incomplete, unrepresentative. At least the losses of planes transferred to the repair units are not counted. It was in Tunisia also, as Andrew Arthy wrote, but the scale of such Ostfront losses is certainly far more high for obvious reasons.

6. These mines were particularly effective in the initial period of the Soviet-German war, because the Soviet navy was “practically unready” to defend against their advanced firing mechanisms, which included combined acoustic and magnetic detonators (Kuznetsov and Morozov 2015: 42, 50)

As co-author of the book you cited I can say that though Soviet navy indeed was practically unready to sweep these mines 22.Jun.1941, German mining campaign had failed. Partly because the solution was founded quickly (among others the further «father» of Soviet A-Bomb and of nuclear energetics Kurchatov and further President of Academy of Science Aleksandrov had worked with that problem in Sevastopol). Partly it was due to German unwise tactical solutions and even due to bad knowledge of the operational characteristics the own mines by German headquarters. The sole palpable result for German airdropped mines was later, during April-May 1942 in the Kerch Strait, partly due to difficulty of minesweeping due to local German air superiority.
And I'm surprising that Germans had used 41% of aerial mines in 1942 in the East, during the almost pure overland campaign.

7. Table 16. Expenditure of selected classes of Luftwaffe munitions, second half of 1941

It is amazing technique to not count the most used bombs (50 kg and lower) with explanation that more heavy bombs were «reserved for especially important tasks». No comments.

Too long post, I’m stopping.

Best regards,
Andrey

[Dan History]

Originally Posted by Andrey Kuznetsov

Hello Dan

Hello Andrey,

Thank you for your response. I have been busy with work, but I will reply to you here and hope to also reply to the others who are waiting for a response within the next few days.

Let me begin by saying that attacking my integrity is not the best way to start a discussion. I did not see Ruy's comment as an attack in the way that you have implied, and I will leave it to Ruy to speak for himself. Your attack is unwarranted, since I have set out a substantial body of evidence, some of it never before presented. Only after presenting the evidence did I reach my conclusions, which the evidence supports.

I am very surprised that you, as a historian of the Second World War, suggest that the Luftwaffe was "one of the components, not more" of the initial German victories. It is abundantly clear that the campaigns in Scandinavia and in the West in 1940 were critically dependent on the German air force. It was the Luftwaffe that broke Allied resistance and allowed other German forces to succeed. Much the same phenomenon was in evidence during the summer of 1941 on the Eastern front. Suggesting otherwise betrays a fundamentally incorrect understanding of the course of the war, so I am quite surprised that you have made such a comment.

To reply to your specific comments:

1. Aircraft distribution

To start with your main point, the distribution between East and West is the crux of my study. This allows an understanding of German resource allocation between the very different wars against the Western Allies and the Soviet Union respectively. Greater detail of aircraft distribution by theatre would be useful to discuss the interplay between Luftwaffe operations on the Western front and in the Mediterranean. I may include this data in a future study.

Data on total numbers of sorties flown is certainly interesting, but I would strongly dispute it is more useful than the the data on aircraft strength. Data on aircraft strength gives an overall sense of capability in a given theatre of operations, while sortie numbers are dependent on a large number of factors, for example range to target, availability of specific equipment needed for particular missions etc. Nevertheless, overall data on the number of sorties by front and aircraft class (single-engine fighters, bombers etc.) would be extremely interesting, but I have never seen it. There are fragments about the Battle of Sevastopol in 1942 and other selected operations, but nothing which allows a comparison between fronts. I am aware of the reports to army groups and other army units submitted by various air headquarters, but again these are merely fragments in the history of the war as a whole. If someone could collate such reports, it would be of substantial utility for our field of research, but this is a vast task on its own and would probably not provide much data which can be compared across different fronts.

As for Luftflotte 5, I have divided its units between East and West, based on some comments in the original documents themselves and on secondary sources. I may have made some errors in this division, but because of the small size of Luftflotte 5 and of the specific units involved, this does not materially affect the overall argument. As sircraft in reserve I counted those with units resting, refitting or in transit, as well as newly delivered aircraft which had not yet been absorbed by frontline units. I will give a breakdown for a specific day of the war when I will have had time to set it out formally unit by unit, since clarity of public presentation is important.

2. Allocation of guns

Thank you for the note concerning heavy flak units in the Kerch area. It is clear that the summary report is in error here, but you are wrong to imply that this somehow casts the entire body of data presented in the report into doubt. The overwhelming majority of every single category of flak equipment was deployed against the Western allies. It would, of course, be very interesting to present similar information on army and naval anti-aircraft units. The majority of army flak was in the East and of naval flak in the West, but there is no reason to suggest that adding these units would change the overall picture. The majority of German flak guns was concentrated under Luftwaffe control.

If you can provide data, or reference to sources at Freiburg, which give a more specific breakdown of anti-aircraft guns by front, I would gladly make use of this and would gratefully acknowledge your assistance.

3. Losses of anti-aircraft batteries

I think this data is very useful, since the majority of flak batteries were not deployed on the battlefield, but some distance behind the frontline. Therefore, losses of entire flak units were relatively rare events and it is interesting to see where such events occurred. The phenomenon that you are surprised by, that so many more batteries were lost in the Mediterranean than in the East in the years 1941 to 1943, is quite easy to explain. The Allied forces were far more efficient at sinking Axis ships than Soviet forces were, so some flak units would have been sunk in transit. Furthermore, the retreats in Africa and the final surrender in Tunisia happened at a speed and intensity which was rare on the Eastern front. The German army suffered many defeats in the East, but rarely would it flee at a speed and for such a long distance as after the Battle of El-Alamein, for example.

There is data at Freiburg summarising the losses of flak guns by Luftflotte for most months of 1942 and 1943, so this can be calculated and adduced as additional evidence. If you want to help with this endeavour, I would be glad! The key observation to make is that since the Soviet war effort was less technologically advanced than that of the Western Allies, the Soviet armed forces had difficulty inflicting substantial losses on German forces away from the immediate frontline. Therefore, even with the greater scale of ground fighting in the East, Luftwaffe flak losses were not particularly large.

4. The replacement of losses

It is extraordinary to read the statement that there was no reduction in the quality of Luftwaffe aircrew before Operation Barbarossa. This would mean that the very high losses of experienced aircrew in the Battle of Britain, in particular, had no effect on the quality of Luftwaffe personnel as a whole. Furthermore, the suggestion that all new crews became battle-hardened is clearly at variance with the facts. Experienced and successful aircrew were extremely difficult to replace for all air forces, something which is frequently commented on in a variety of secondary sources.

5. Completeness or otherwise of German loss records

While a few questions have been raised about the completeness and accuracy of the Gen.Qu. loss lists of individual aircraft, it has not been demonstrated that the same issue affects summary loss reports. You assume that these were simply summaries of individual loss returns, while they could have been formed based on a much wider and more complete set of sources. Looking at the issue as a whole, it is very difficult to sustain the position that the Luftwaffe simply did not know or consciously under-reported its losses in its internal accounting. Furthermore, there is no reason to think that in the case of individual aircraft losses, the problem of Gen.Qu. reporting was more pronounced in the East than on other fronts. Vast numbers of airframes were abandoned not just in Tunisia, but in Sicily and southern Italy and later in France. There are a few researchers on this forum who will have much to say about this, including Andrew, of course.

6. Aerial mines

It is excellent to read your response here, thank you! Kurchatov was not in any substantive sense the ‘father’ of the Soviet nuclear programme, but to get back to the subject at hand, you are right that the Germans misused aerial mines. However, I think you are changing the emphasis subtly in your response. During spring 1942 in the Kerch straight, there was a palpable immediate operational effect of the use of aerial mines. This in itself is highly unusual for a single weapons system, since usually only a combination of different weapons has an effect at an operational level. The main effect of aerial mines was to put a general stress on Soviet naval operations, which was significant, as can be seen from your own writing. It was certainly not in any sense decisive, as you emphasise, but it is very reasonable to suggest that if much more than 9% of German aerial mines were used in the East in 1941, the Soviet navy would have had very substantial problems. You know the context very well, that even less sophisticated naval mines caused catastrophic problems in selected operations, especially the evacuation of Tallinn. If you look at the raw numbers, you will see that the greater proportion of mine expenditure in the East in 1942 was a function of the overall decrease in the scale of mining operations on all fronts.

7. Counting bombs

As a naval historian, you will be well aware that small bombs were of very limited utility in attacking any protected target, be it warships or coastal fortifications. Therefore, it is very reasonable to treat heavier bombs separately, since certain types of operations were entirely impossible when such bombs were unavailable. Given what you know of German problems of reducing the fortifications of Sevastopol and sinking warships in the Baltic and Black Seas, it is surprising that you have “no comment”.


Kind regards,

Dan