VVS loss reporting system (Damage/Destroyed/"loss")...

[kolya1]

Hello,

If anybody familiar with russian documents could tell me how the loss reporting system worked in the VVS during WWII, I'd be very interested...

Here is what makes me ask this : while researching a bit about the Battle of Kursk, I found diverging loss figures between daily reports ("The Battle of Kursk : the Soviet General Staff study", and many others) and overall figures (Krivosheev,...)...

E.g. : - Almost all sources mention 176 soviet losses ("потери") on the first day of the Battle (5/07/1943)...
- Similarly, the following days' reports show enormous losses, with a total if add each figure of approximately 500 after 4 days of battle.
- Krivosheev mentions only 459 aircrafts lost in the Kursk operation for the 5/07 to 23/07 time, and the Orel operations which could create some confusion didn't start before the 12/07...

- So there is clearly a gap between the reported daily losses (more than 500 in 4 days), and the total number of losses (at the very least less than 459 in 7 days)...

An explanation I read somewhere, was that the first figure reflects all aircrafts no longer flyable at the end of the day, while the second one reflects all aircraft "definitely lost".


This seems to make sense, but could somebody confirm or invalidate this ?

Many thanks,

Kolya