German Losses

Does anyone know the German method for counting their own losses? For example, while dead and wounded pilots were clearly casualties, did the Germans keep records of their aircraft forced to land, or crashed without injury to crew, etc.?

A definitive answer to this might shed a bit more light on the seemingly endless controversies about allied claims.

Bob

[Billy_Bishop]

Compared to the methods used by the RFC for recording damaged and destroyed aircraft, I think the Germans just recorded those aircraft that were no longer "usable".

But then I think their definition of "usable" was if you could use it for parts, it was still "usable".



VBR,

Al Lowe

[Ron_F]

If a pilot crashed his plane, and walked away,no entry is made.
No aircraft loss lists were made/survived(?), thus compounding the problem.
This can be found in the GOGS books.
Perhaps if the Jasta diarys kept that info, but i believe those are gone/never survived the war.

Ron

[Billy_Bishop]

What I have been told is this. There are maybe two ORIGINAL Jasta War Diaries that managed to survive the maelstrom of two world wars. All that are left are copies that were made between the wars of what had survived the 1st World War.

AND, to top that off, not everything in the Jasta war diaries was copied. Only those items that interested the historians of the day was copied.

So there you have it. Good luck finding out exactly how many German aircraft were ACTUALLY lost to all causes.

VBR,

Al Lowe

ALL causes?
From memory, I think they build some 27000 frames. Some 2000 were still used at the end of the war. That leaves some 25000 frames. I can look up the exact data in the Kroeschel&Stutzer.

In addition, we know that some 7000 men of the flying personal died to all causes.

regards

Axel

[Craig]

Killed (accident or in action), wounded, injured, captured, missing, POW. Anything bad that happened to one of their personnel. They accounted for planes as well, but I think that these records were lost entirely or are at best very incomplete.

Holy smokes... so SOME people on this forum are trying to compare Allied victory scores to Dead GAS airmen???

What does a guy have to do to get some credit from GAS-o-philes? Take a picture of every "Kill".

What is it Barrett always says? A kill is a victory but a victory isn't always a kill. Sorry if that's wrong.

Jeez, i always thought the mighty german records were keeping track of planes lost.

[Craig]

Now, Kory - we've been through this before. Misrepresenting your adversaries' POV discredits only you - and your POV.

Hi,

Concerning the number of losses of German air personnel, my list is for the moment about 11.300 names. And it is still growing every month.

Just to give a idea. By no means used for any comparison on numbers.

Johan

Most German aviators were lost by lucky shots fired by the Australian Infantry, weren't they? Just kidding.