Sitzkrieg in air - both German and Allied victory?

[GuerraCivil]

I wonder if anyone has made general study of air combats at the Western front during the so-called Sitzkrieg period 3.9.1939 - 9.5.1940?

From the fragments that I have seen it seems that both sides claimed victory - shooting down more planes than lost themselves.

Here something on German side during Sitzkrieg:

About 150 - 160 air victories for Luftwaffe, more than half of them - 78 - credited to JG 53 (or III/JG 53), which lost only 11 pilots in air combats. Source: Kurt Braatz: Werner Mölders. Die Biographie.

Although Bf 109 D or "Dora" was considered somewhat outdated (at the side of "Emil"), the units flying with it showed clearly victorious balance sheet of Sitzkrieg:
the loss of 8 Bf 109 D and 5 pilots was balanced by 16 air victories, of which 8 were Allied fighters (5 MS 406 + 3 Hawk 75).

However, also French fighter units could show favourable balance sheet of the period of "drole de guerre" of 3.9.1939 - 9.5.1940:

70 confirmed air victories against the loss of 28 fighter planes and 13 pilots. However the recce and bomber units suffered somewhat more. Source: Barry Keitley - French Aces of World War 2.

Of the RAF records of "Phoney War" I do not know the official "kill/loss" -scores, but I would not be surprised that they would show that RAF (fighter units) destroyed clearly more German planes than RAF lost in air combat.

So both sides won in Sitzkrieg/Drole de Guerre/Phoney War shooting down more planes than lost themselves in air combat?

What do researched/surviving loss records of both sides tell? Was it actually German or French/British side which came clearly over the top by downing/destroying more planes than lost themselves? Or was it more or less even? Was possible (or better said usual) overclaiming more or less of the same scale by both sides?

[Nick Beale]

I think Peter Cornwell's "Battle of France Then & Now" could be what you're looking for.

[Laurent Rizzotti]

If you compare fighter losses with fighter claims (including enemy fighter but also bomber and reconnaissance aircraft), you will find that most of the fighter units of WW2 would be "victorious", claiming more than their own losses.

In some unit histories, to reach this, the writer had to compare claims against the number of pilot lost in combat, that is usually far lower than the number of aircraft lost.

Peter Cornwell's "Battle of France Then & Now" is excellent for covering the air battles on the French border, but the North Sea battles are out of his scope and saw a great part of the German and RAF losses, so should be included in the total to see which side won... if any did.

My bet would be to search numbers in the old book "Fledgling Eagles: the Complete Account of Air Operations During the Phoney War and Norwegian Campaign, 1940", by Christopher Shores, with John Foreman, Christian-Jacques Ehrengardt, Heinrich Weiss and Bjorn Olsen.

Cornwell's has more details, especially on crew losses and distinction between damaged/destroyed aircraft, but it seems to me that most if not all combat losses of the period were already known to Shores and co at the time.

[Nick Beale]

Originally Posted by Laurent Rizzotti

If you compare fighter losses with fighter claims (including enemy fighter but also bomber and reconnaissance aircraft), you will find that most of the fighter units of WW2 would be "victorious", claiming more than their own losses.

Laurent is right, defending fighters are not really intended to shoot down attacking fighters but to eliminate the threat from bombers and reconnaissance. They should only be engaging enemy fighters to get through to their "real" target. The attackers may well have a higher "fighter vs. fighter" score but still lose the larger battle.

[John Beaman]

Have you looked at Dr. Prien's series? Along with The Battle of France, Now and Then, as referenced by Nick, these two sources should be reasonable definitive.

[Larry Hickey]

Hello,

The EoE Working Group has been working closely with both of the main sources mentioned above and is in the middle of determining the answer to this question. We are actually trying to locate photos of all the losses (crashed & forced landings) on both sides, and has made very major progress in this respect--far beyond anything that has yet been published. Although the scale of combat during this period was very different than later in the war, except perhaps during the Battle of the Heligoland Bight, both sides apparently over-claimed to some degree against their opponents. During the Battle of the Heligoland Bight (18.12.39), the Germans massively over-claimed against the British Wellington formations. There were other instances throughout the Phoney War/Sitzkrieg and throughout 1939-40 where a/c claimed on both sides escaped with damage rather than shoot downs. Multiple attack against the same targets, but reported as discrete events, also account for many instances of over-claiming.

We've added a great deal of material (literally hundreds of new or revised entries) to Peter Cornwell's original listings in TBoFRT&N. Peter is directly overseeing our revisions to his earlier EoE Loss DB for 1939-40 so the quality of the new material is entirely consistent with his previous efforts. Jochen Prien and other members of his team are also working closely with the EoE Project to get the most reliable loss/damage and claims lists, as well as obtaining related and comprehensive photo evidence involving the German fighter forces.

Eventually the EoE effort will probably provide what will be the most definitive answer to this question as it will ever be able to achieve.

Stay tuned.