Doing it German style

I think claims were made in good faith,it's got to be the nature of the beast.In August 1940 American journalists tried to find the wrecks of aircraft brought down on a particular day.Although our Goverment helped them,hoping for a transatlantic popaganda coup,they only found a quarter of the kills claimed that day.When the Yanks had the audacity to point this out they were fobbed off with "the others crashed in the sea"!!!
As for Fat Herman's lads, they kept meeting Fighter Commands last half dozen Spitfires right up to close of play.
Ginger always tells us before he leads the dawn patrol "Get the claim in as soon as you land and let the Devil sort it out.Heres to the next man to die"!!!

[rammjaeger]

"(a note I scribbled down over 20 years ago suggests that the Germans lost 3,128 aircraft and 546 balloons on the Western Front)"

Yes Graeme, this number is too low but why did you not seriously try to come up with a more precise number based on German sources?

For example you should take in account (and that was never a secret!) that these numbers are e.g. not including October/November losses of 1918 (Based on a German source German airplane "consumption" - combat and losses in accidents - was in average 14 per day in the last period of the war. Also in these numbers are not including losses of Navy airplanes. Both facts are well-known and easy to find in the German sources.

Finally an amount of write-offs without personal losses is not included (and really only to estimate) - that is more important but also not enough to make all your mentioned British "hard claims" to kills.

BTW: Did you really exclude all the multiple counting from your 5569 British and 756+76 US-American "hard claims"?
I am seriously doubting that!!!

I am also doubting that the Brits were achieving 200% or more of the French "hard claims" with a - compared to the Frenchmen - very little airpower (some sources claim only 50% of the French strength.) The Frenchmen were not that BAD!

Regards
Hannes

[Soderbaum]

Hi Graeme

Do you have any idea of how many British AA ertillery claims which were made during the War..?

It is possible that "many" German losses were due French or British AA fire...

Any idea of the total is welome..?

VBR
Gunnar

[Graeme]

Since I started mucking about with this stuff, I've had three jobs, got married, had a family, two heart attacks and a triple bypass (which is how I have the time to compile these numbers) so apart from the fact that I don't speak German, I've really not had the time to trot off and dig up a "precise" number of German losses - even it was possible to derive such a figure.

I note that "Casualties of the German Air Service" lists 1,389 pilots as having "failed to return" and 1,734 as having fallen into their own lines as the result of combat, a total of 3,123 pilots (and presumably aeroplanes). The authors state that theses figures were published as Table 9 in the Statistisches Jahrbuch fur das Deutche Reich 1924-25, compiled from data provided by the German Reichsarchiv. This number isn't far removed from the figure I quoted previously.

Yes I have allowed for shared victories in my listings; the list I have compiled for the RFC etc shows 6,563 entries for those 5,569 victories; the compilation I have made so far for the USAS (still incomplete) shows that about 1,052 pilots claimed something like 720 victories. This should serve to show that a lot of pilots claimed a smaller number of victories. If I have sufficient time, perhaps I'll build a website and stick my databases on there for everyone to pick to pieces.

VBR Graeme

[Graeme]

Gunnar

I've no idea how many aeroplanes French artillery may have shot down but I might be able to come up with a figure for the British by going through the Communiques. I'll start tomorrow and post the number as soon as possible.

Graeme

I must quote General Patton on my one comment on this thread.

"A soldiers job is not to die for his country, but to make the enemy die for his"

Well, I know that it is not a direct quote, but close enough

[Lufbery]

The quote from Patton as I remember it is:

[color=blue] "A soldier's job is not to die for his country, but to make the other poor, dumb, bastard die for his." </font>

I couldn't resist setting the record straight.

-Drew

[Ira_Silverman]

As I mentioned on a similar thread long ago and far away, when discussing this subject, a quote of Disraeli's keeps coming to mind:

"There are lies, damned lies, and statistics."

VBR,

Ira

[rammjaeger]

Graeme, excuse my unjustified demand but based on your earlier posts I thought you would be a kind of fulltime-researcher who is having the time (and money! for such researches. I hope you are enjoying your hobby without being disturbed by other healthyness problems.

I think it is possible to come up one day in the future whith a number which is giving the right impression and dimension of the losses (I am not thinking that these data are reflecting EVERY lost man or airplane).. I have this believe also for the German side because I am convinced that there are a lot of (until now) unused and unknown sources existent in Germany but especially in Russia (captured in or after WWII in Germany).

BTW: I would relate the lost aircraft not only to the killed or missing German airmen (don´t forget the non-KIA!) and we should also take in account that the majority of German aircraft (produced and lost) were doubleseaters and not oneseater.

That leads to two structural questions which obviously were not researched (?) until now:
1. The structure of the numbers of airplanes which were removed from the lists in WWI because of accidents, combat losses (incl. after combat write-offs), replacement by more modern airplanes and export.
Germany removed 27637 but Britain 35973 and France 52640 airplanes fromt heir roles of war. One reason more that I am believing the Germans had a positive kill ratio different to Allied claims (or believes) but only the exact research of the structure of these numbers (if possible) could give more insights.

2. I am always wondering about the enormous high amount of British oneseater (a la Bishop) claims which seems not to fit to the structure of the German airplanes in action. Do you have the structure of your victory claims also refering to claims against oneseaters, doubleseaters etc. and unknown/unidendified airplane?

Answers to these questions could - in my humble opinion - help to come some steps forward in the argument about the amount of airplane losses in WWI.

I think also your idea about an own web site for this topic could be very helpful if that is leading to an exchange of information and more fact-based discussions.

VBR
Hannes Täger

[Graeme]

Hannes

I've extracted a portion of my database listing for the RFC and RNAS and will e-mail this to you directly (it would take up too much space here). Essentially, each claim is listed with the date, time, location, pilot + observer, type of aeroplane and serial number, type of German aeroplane and the result of the combat [taken from British records]. I have also attempted to correlate German losses to the British claims.

Graeme