Comparative air force performance & a/c production

[Guaporense]

This only includes single engine fighters? Apparently, losses here are higher than in Murray's strategy for defeat. Murray gives 2,855 losses of fighters to combat in the first half of 1944, while you give 3,541 combat losses only for single engine fighters.

Yes, this includes only single engine fighters units flying Bf 109 and Fw 190. (I'll post the complete list later).
But the question is what really is an aircraft loss?
There is as many answer to this question than there is people to think about it.
One may think that an aircraft is only lost when it is 100% destroyed and others will use whatever benchmark under 100% ready. Murray used some different benchmark from the Luftwaffe records where aircraft losses were recorded as percentage of damage sustained (10-100%) when the units used certainly another rule.

Well, that explains the discrepancy. His numbers seemed too low anyway. But, this means that it is practically impossible for us to compare equipment losses of each side, since each country can use different benchmarks. This means that it is harder than thought to defend my thesis.

So, the definitive number of single engine fighters lost to combat is 8,965?

[Guaporense]

Hi, takata, so the 26,000 fighters produced in 1944 is made up? Cool, however, that means that much of Ger's munitions production was inflated, since fighters made up a large proportion of munitions production in 1944.

[RichTO90]

This means that it is harder than thought to defend my thesis.

To be very blunt...no shit Sherlock.

[takata_1940]

Hi Rich,

Good points. I was only referring to Bf109 and Fw190 as being part of the Schule inventory, but of course they would have been older models recycled into the system. So the question - or rather questions - then become:

1. Were rebuilt aircraft counted as "production"? I think that is barely possible in that it makes the numbers "fit" better. But there should be better evidence in the records and certainly I think it would be discussed in Procurement of Aircraft by Walter Hertel (USAF Study 170, 1955), but it is not that I have found.

To this question, I've got no definitive answer..
No, the rebuilt aircraft were not supposed to be counted with the newly produced airframes, but yes, they were also counted as a different kind of production. There should be three categories: Neubau, Umbau and Reparatur. The Umbau number is marginal considering the Bf 109 and Fw 190 production figures, but the Reparatur number is quite big. It looks like what is usually found in the production figures as "Neubau" only seems rather to be the total produced of 1944, including the "Reparatur".

The next problem is to find a reliable German production dataset with enough details to make the comparison. Here is a site publishing the yearly numbers for Neubau, Umbau and Repartur:
http://www.luftarchiv.de/index.htm?/flu ... zahlen.htm

This datataset (rounded) is on the left and mine on the right:
1944
Total............/my dataset
- T: 32650.........T: 24550
- N: 25550.........N: 18350
- R: 07100.........R: 06200
Bf 109............/...........
- T: 18550.........T: 13350
- N: 13800.........N: 09900
- R: 04750.........R: 03450
Fw 190............/...........
- T: 14100.........T: 11200
- N: 11750.........N: 08450
- R: 02350.........R: 02750
_______________
1943
Total............/my dataset
- T: 12650.........T: 11350
- N: 09600.........N: 08050
- R: 03050.........R: 03300
Bf 109............/...........
- T: 08600.........T: 07200
- N: 06250.........N: 05200
- R: 02350.........R: 02000
Fw 190............/...........
- T: 04050.........T: 04150
- N: 03350.........N: 02850
- R: 00700.........R: 01300
_______________
1942 (Mar-Dec)
Total............./my dataset
- T: 04950.........T: 04700
- N: 03450.........N: 03600
- R: 01500.........R: 01100
Bf 109............/...........
- T: 03450.........T: 03350
- N: 02000.........N: 02400
- R: 01450.........R: 00950
Fw 190.........../...........
- T: 01500.........T: 01350
- N: 01450.........N: 01200
- R: 00050.........R: 00150

Year 1942 seems ok: 4,950 vs 4,700 is well inside the error margin and 1943 seems ok also with 12,650 vs 11,350 with a difference of 1,550 concerning the new airframes which I still believe to fit inside the error margin of both computation. But then, we can see that the 1944 figures are completely off the range of mine. I definively need more detailed production data than what I've got on hand to find out exactly where the problem is.

2. Were thousands of production aircraft left parked about Germany? Doubtful, they would have been underfoot - and noticeable.

There were certainly thousands of production aircraft left parked all around Germany at various production sites but not so many thousands and, of course, not at the same place. By 1944, the aircraft production was highly decentralized and there was thousands of workshops producing airframes, engines and accessories. The somewhat cumbersome process of Luftwaffe acceptation was certainly able to ground several thousands newly produced machines at the same time. A good part were not accepted before being seriously reworked and it could have taken quite some time (several weeks) to do it. Moreover, the quality of the production had already drastically decreased by this time. Total acceptations averaged 92% for Bf 109s and 90% for Fw 190s but only 64% for Ar 234, 56% for Me 262, 53% for Me 210, 48% for Me 163, 22% for Ju 388 or 5% for Ta 154...[F.A.Vajda & P.Dancey: German Aircraft Industry and Production 1933-1945]

3. Did Speer "cook the books" regarding output? Barely possible in 1944 and 1945, although I would still doubt it, and very doubtful for 1943.

The major part of 1943 seems to fit with my data as shown above. It is possible that Speer changed the rules at some point and created new statistics for the new production that looked much better than real by this way.

4. Were the books simply wrong or misinterpreted in some way? Possible, since it's happened before.

Yes, it is the most plausible explanation, a kind of mix with the previous hypothesis, due to the difficulties in order to collect consistently the whole production data. Vajda & P.Dancey are pointing a such a problem for explaining the variety of statistics issued by different RLM/Luftwaffe offices. Where the book is very disapointing is that it reproduces plenty of such tables without proper explanations of what the real data actually were. One end with 20+ datasets full of contradictions and no clue about the real figures.

Or is there another possible answer? It definitely is interesting.

Of course, there is... and yes, it is.

Cheers,
Olivier

[Jon G.]

There is an article written by one Adam Tooze addressing the very same problem available as a pdf file here I have not yet read the article, but it seems highly pertinent to this discussion.

[phylo_roadking]

2. Were thousands of production aircraft left parked about Germany? Doubtful, they would have been underfoot - and noticeable.

There were certainly thousands of production aircraft left parked all around Germany at various production sites but not so many thousands and, of course, not at the same place. By 1944, the aircraft production was highly decentralized and there was thousands of workshops producing airframes, engines and accessories. The somewhat cumbersome process of Luftwaffe acceptation was certainly able to ground several thousands newly produced machines at the same time. A good part were not accepted before being seriously reworked and it could have taken quite some time (several weeks) to do it.

Actually - sometimes they are noticable, in an anecdotal way For example - look at the totals of Me262s destroyed in early 1945 simply parked at their factory strips waiting to be ferried out...! A raid on Leipheim in March 1945 destroyed thirty 262s on the ground awaiting collection; sixty were destroyed at Obertrauling in late February/early March. A raid on Neuberg/Donau at the end of march destroyed 80-110 aircraft on the ground, almost all the ground installations, and the entire stock of spare engine units...

Okay, it's 1945, not 1944 - but the principle is the same, aircraft sitting parked at factory airstrips awaiting distribution to units. And in the example of those three raids alone, 200 brand new aircraft were destroyed!

So, given that by 1944 the LW's need was starting to outstrip the supply of pilots out of the schools for the reasons discussed - ferry pilots must have been in equally short supply...?

EDIT; something else has come to mind. How many completed airframes of various types, accounted for in the various datasets, were sitting parked up awaiting engines? The Allies certainly came across plenty of those at the end of the war...

[takata_1940]

Hi Jon,

There is an article written by one Adam Tooze addressing the very same problem available as a pdf file here I have not yet read the article, but it seems highly pertinent to this discussion.

This Tooze's pdf is an addenda explaining the data spreadsheets he used to build his tables:
http://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/academic_staf ... ction.html
The spreadsheet is here:
http://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/academic_staf ... -reich.xls

You are right that he struggled to reconciliate the different datasets of German production (he also used Vajda & Dancey, op. cited, dataset for aircraft production). But he doesn't really address such kind of problems as I enlighted with aircraft production figures. Anyway, it's usefull to understand the problem with WWII German armament production data. One can always trust the dataset he likes more while another one can use the next office statistics to contradict him ad nauseam.

S~
Olivier

[takata_1940]

Hi Phylo.

Actually - sometimes they are noticable, in an anecdotal way For example - look at the totals of Me262s destroyed in early 1945 simply parked at their factory strips waiting to be ferried out...! A raid on Leipheim in March 1945 destroyed thirty 262s on the ground awaiting collection; sixty were destroyed at Obertrauling in late February/early March. A raid on Neuberg/Donau at the end of march destroyed 80-110 aircraft on the ground, almost all the ground installations, and the entire stock of spare engine units...
Okay, it's 1945, not 1944 - but the principle is the same, aircraft sitting parked at factory airstrips awaiting distribution to units. And in the example of those three raids alone, 200 brand new aircraft were destroyed!
So, given that by 1944 the LW's need was starting to outstrip the supply of pilots out of the schools for the reasons discussed - ferry pilots must have been in equally short supply...?

The fate of new jet technology production is quite different than for the good old-piston-proved fighter types addressed by my tables. As I mentioned above, the acceptation ratio for the Me 262 was only 56% of the total aircraft produced until the end of the war. Out of 1,453 supposedly produced before May 1945, only 809 were accepted. Then, 624 Me 262 were lying somewhere waiting for the definitive modifications able to make them flyable. It is then certainly no surprise that several dozens of those birds were caught at once by bomber raids on the ground.

EDIT; something else has come to mind. How many completed airframes of various types, accounted for in the various datasets, were sitting parked up awaiting engines? The Allies certainly came across plenty of those at the end of the war...

Actually not so many, considering this gap with the production figures. Something like 12-15,000 combat aircraft in various condition, were accounted by the allies, but this is not that much compared to the size of the Luftwaffe in 1945.
S~
Olivier

[Jon G.]

...

...
1. Were rebuilt aircraft counted as "production"? I think that is barely possible in that it makes the numbers "fit" better. But there should be better evidence in the records and certainly I think it would be discussed in Procurement of Aircraft by Walter Hertel (USAF Study 170, 1955), but it is not that I have found.

To this question, I've got no definitive answer..
No, the rebuilt aircraft were not supposed to be counted with the newly produced airframes, but yes, they were also counted as a different kind of production. There should be three categories: Neubau, Umbau and Reparatur. The Umbau number is marginal considering the Bf 109 and Fw 190 production figures, but the Reparatur number is quite big. It looks like what is usually found in the production figures as "Neubau" only seems rather to be the total produced of 1944, including the "Reparatur"...

I dug out my copy of Prien & Rodeike's Bf-109 book in order to gain some additional insigths into this. And we can perhaps shed a little bit of light on how rebuilt machines were accounted for, at least indirectly, without delving too deeply into the myriad sub-types of Bf-109 built and the whole Werknummer malarkey. Meaning, it would make perfect sense to count only new Werknummern as Neubau machines, but unfortunately, Werknummern were assigned in batches which can't all be accounted for. Rebuilt machines apparently retained their old Werknummer.

For example, most of the Bf-109 G-6/AS-sub-model (a G 6 with improved high altitude performance achieved by fitting a DB 603-supercharger to a DB 605-engine, a modification which required factory-level modifications to the engine cowling, and also the fitting of a larger tail unit) were rebuilt machines. According to Prien & Rodeike pp 111-114, only 226 Bf 109 G-6/AS were new builds (made at Regensburg in May-August 1944); the other 460 AS-models were all rebuilds. That number, which as far as I can see is a 1944-only figure, alone surpasses the Luftarchiv's number for 'Umbau' machines by 131.

It was the same story with the Bf-109 G-12 two-seated trainers - they were rebuilds made from a plethora of 109 G sub-types, but they retained their old Werknummern.

Finally, and still strictly AIUI, the entire Bf-109 G-10 series was made up of rebuilt machines, taken from earlier Werknummer blocks, with a planned production run of 6,000 to have been built between October 1944 and August 1945, but obviously fewer were built - P & R cautiously estimates the total at c. 2,600 aircraft.

As a very limited litmus test of sorts, I consulted Michael Holm's site to cross-check one unit equipped with the Bf-109 G 10, namely the III/JG1. This unit took delivery of 8 G-10s in November 1944, all eight aircraft accounted for as 'Neufertigung' machines. So in at least this one case, aircraft arriving from repair/Überholung belong in the new build category, supporting your theory. And with the G-10 conversion models being selected from existing Werknummer series, we could have a partial explanation for why some machines may have been accounted for as newly-built twice (or more); the good question then becomes how the aircraft seleced for conversion to G-10s were accounted for when they left their units? The 'from repairs' (R/2) column on your tables appears too low (1,732 Bf-109s in all of 1944) to account for all of them by that channel.

[takata_1940]

Hello Jon,

As a very limited litmus test of sorts, I consulted Michael Holm's site to cross-check one unit equipped with the Bf-109 G 10, namely the III/JG1. This unit took delivery of 8 G-10s in November 1944, all eight aircraft accounted for as 'Neufertigung' machines. So in at least this one case, aircraft arriving from repair/Überholung belong in the new build category, supporting your theory. And with the G-10 conversion models being selected from existing Werknummer series, we could have a partial explanation for why some machines may have been accounted for as newly-built twice (or more); the good question then becomes how the aircraft seleced for conversion to G-10s were accounted for when they left their units? The 'from repairs' (R/2) column on your tables appears too low (1,732 Bf-109s in all of 1944) to account for all of them by that channel.

An interesting effort. The channel for leaving the inventory is obviously thru any of the four losses columns (combat, non combat, technical or organisational) as, for example, the column "leaving for another unit" and "comming from another unit" are not balanced (more are leaving than comming). However, the arrivals (comming from repair + comming from another unit) and departures (overhauling + leaving to another unit) are ballanced.

it would make perfect sense to count only new Werknummern as Neubau machines, but unfortunately, Werknummern were assigned in batches which can't all be accounted for. Rebuilt machines apparently retained their old Werknummer.

This is not even correct as it was found with: Wk. Nr. 931884, a Fw 190 F-8 from I./SG 2, built by Arado as an A-4 with Wk. Nr. 640069, but later rebuilt by Fieseler as an F-8. Captured intact by the US and marked as FE-117.
Then many aircraft may have had several Werknummern from different factories. This could have been possible with many war equipments inside the recycling loop (weapons, tanks, artillery, aircraft..).

Anyway, I gave up myself at this time to find out any documented explanation depicting why the late aircraft production would be inflated. Knowing that it was was suffisant. Late production figures are too conflicting in many ways, and it is not only about Luftwaffe's gears...

Eventually, the Third Reich economics are a model by themselves. It would make sense for an economy deprived of many basic raw materials to make a very good use of recyclings and lootings inside its own economical sphere. On the other hand, it makes it difficult to compare Germany's war effort with those of other belligerants.

But in fact, I think that it is true for every other belligerant country of WWII, each one having its own specificities making macro-economical values very difficult to match in cross countries comparisons. That's why I think that GDP and other economical models are useless for such wartime comparisons and analysis, including the rearmament periods like for Germany 1933-1939. Who actually can claim he is knowing the exact German military spendings for this period? figures are ranging from 1 to 2.5... how then one can affirm, based only on such data, that the planning was such or such and comparing the national mobilization level with other countries?

S~
Olivier

[4232041]

Is there any information on IV./JG302 July 1944

Thanks

[Jon G.]

4232041

I've left your query in place although it is not really pertinent to this topic. Could you elaborate your question a bit please?

[4232041]

Where would I post this type of question in the future?

I am researching the markings of bf109 G-6 4./JG302 Black 9 W. Nr.441656 July of 1944 Pilot Wilhelm Hallenberger.
Thanks

[Jon G.]

4232041 - anywhere in the Luftwaffe section

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewforum.php?f=49

...go there, click 'new topic', write your query, give it an appropriate title, and you should be all set.

...alternatively, try the 12 o'clock high forum, that is often a good place to take very specialized questions

http://forum.12oclockhigh.net/