Axis Aircraft on Captured Landing Grounds, Nov/Dec 41

[AndreasB]

I thought some members might be interested in the wide variety of aircraft found by the advancing Empire troops at the end of 1941 in the Western Desert. This is from an RAF report I am just going through.

http://wp.me/phMWl-yx

Happy reading!

All the best Andreas

[JoMe]

Very interesting, Andreas.

Thank you very much

JoMe

[AndreasB]

Thanks for the compliment.

I felt compelled to add the following note to the post, since I quite strongly disagree with MAW's take on these figures:

A note on Mediterranean Air War Vol. I
As an aside, I found the same statistics in Mediterranean Air War Vol. I MAW I) today, but there are some issues I have with the conclusions drawn there. First of all, in addition to the 458 planes below, MAW I also gives numbers for Agedabia and Thamet aerodromes which of course had not been taken at this stage (and Thamet would not be taken until a year later, in fact). These numbers appear to be simply a repeat of the claims made by the S.A.S. for the raids on these airfields in December. The problem with this is of course that these claims were certainly wrong for Agedabia, and probably for Thamet. At Agedabia the S.A.S. claimed 37 planes destroyed, but in reality it was 'just' 18. Of course, there probably would have been other planes that had been shot up in strafing raids, or crashlanded. But we simply don't know, so to state that 37 wrecks were found there is not based on any real evidence.

Furthermore, the conclusion drawn in MAW I is that the number of planes found on the airfields can be taken as a ‘fairly accurate assessment’ of Axis losses. This is of course utter nonsense, and I am perplexed as to why it is stated like this. The only thing it is, is an accurate assessment of the numbers of planes found on the airfields. Any plane that crashed or force-landed away from an airfield is not included in this assessment. The number of planes to whom this happened is without doubt significant (probably in the hundreds since the start of the war in North Africa), so the number of wrecks found on airfields does not tell us anything other than the absolute minimum of planes lost by the Axis between 10 June 1940, and the end of December 1941. In other words, it is quite meaningless. The reason for publishing it below, and why I think it has some information value, is different. I think the statistic shows quite well the range of planes that the Axis used, and who primarily used which airfield (e.g. Benina - German, Berka - Italian), and in some cases we can also clearly tie units to airfields (e.g. Gazala No.2&3 - JG27 with Me 109, Benina - LG1 with Ju 88).

All the best


Andreas