Re: VVS Claims and Losses/Order of Battle 1939-1945

[Mike Yared <mikeyared@yahoo.com>]

from Soviet casualties and combat losses in the
twentieth century (Greenhill Books ; Pennsylvania :
Stackpole Books, 1997)

table 79: Red Army losses by area of service,
1943-1945.
air force:
9,456 KIA; 
4438 non-combat losses; 
10,941 MIA; 
total of 24,835.
48993 wounded.

table 82: combat losses among command personnel in the
Army, Navy and Airforce, by rank
air force:
aircrafts pilots: 7855 killed; 10609 MIA

and
U.S. War Dept.  Mil Intell Div.  Preliminary Report on
the Soviet Air Force.  Wash, DC, 26 Jun 	1945.  ca 500
p.  DAG2SAF.

and

http://www.au.af.mil/au/aul/bibs/sov/sov.htm

Soviet Aviation and Air Power: a historical view.
Brassey's, 1977.

WWII chapter, the Great Patriotic War, 1941-1945. by
John Greenwood. 

Frontal Aviation:
1st Guards' Fighters
132 Bomber unit
6th Guards' attack unit
708 air unit

3rd Attack Army:
163 Fighter Unit
728 Fighter Unit
128 Bomber Unit
621 Air Unit
663 Air Unit

4th Attack:
21 Fighter Unit
659 Fighter Unit
348 Fighter Unit
157 Fighter Unit
503 Attack Unit
684 Bomber Unit
695 Air Unit

22nd Army:
518 Fighter Unit
61 Attack Unit
617 Air Unit

30th Army:
5th Guards' Fighters
180 Fighter Unit
745 Bomber Unit

31st Army:
193 Fighter Unit
436 Fighter Unit

39th Army:
521 Fighter Unit
237 Fighter Unit
668 Air Unit

Mike Yared

--- CRAIG CROFOOT <RKKAUSA@msn.com> wrote:
> Gentlemen,
> 
> This is a response to Mr. Brennan's message. This is
> in two parts:
> 
> 1)  Claims and Losses
> I have been in contact with Andrey Dikov.  He has
> replaced Mr. Mikhailov as the writer for the Soviet
> side of the Black Cross/Red Star series of books. 
> He has informed me that he has put together a Group
> of researchers and they are researching the Soviet
> claims for WW2 and the individual aircraft losses,
> both combat and non-combat, also for the war.  He
> has informed me his Group has amount 100 pages
> completed with about 20 entries per page.  I'll have
> to go through my old e-mail to get the specific
> information, but if I remember correctly, he was
> selling them at about $40 per page, which leads me
> to part 2;
> 2)  Order of Battle
> I am a member of a Group of individuals who have
> contracted with a Russian researcher who works in
> the Russian State Military Archives (RGVA) in
> Moscow.  We have asked him to provide information on
> the order of battle of the Air Forces (both Army
> (RKKA-VVS) and Navy (VMF-VVS)) for the entire
> September 1939 - December 1945 period at the
> Regimental level.  The information will include the
> identification of the Regiment, where it was based
> at, which HQ it was assigned to, the ground service
> unit that supported it and the make and number of
> aircraft assigned and on-hand.  We have about 65
> Regiments already, all from the September 1939-March
> 1941 period.  The plan is for the researcher to go
> through the records he has immediate access to
> (about 150 Regiments) then proceed through the
> Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense (TsAMO)
> in Podol'sk.
> 
> If you wish any further information (and not clog
> the forum message board) please contact me at:
> 
> rkkausa@msn.com
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Craig Crofoot
> Madison, Wisconsin
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Joe Brennan
> Sent: Saturday, July 19, 2003 5:18 PM
> To: KOREAN-WAR-L@listproc.cc.ku.edu
> Subject: Re: Book review: Red Wings Over the Yalu:
> China,the Soviet Union and the Air...
> 
> I have never seen a close analysis of Soviet claims
> v. actual Axis air combat losses for WWII. I wonder
> was it possible to do that in the period you
> studied? In Bergrstrom and Mikhailov's Black
> Cross/Red Star series, unique as it is, they don't
> really seem to do that, not in a comprehensive way
> at least. It may not be possible for very large
> scale conflicts. My sense is even for say the
> western front in 1944 it's very difficult, so many
> air forces and units overlapping one another. It's
> much more tractable in Korea at least sticking to
> the simple assumption that then-secret records are
> usually correct on losses and their causes if the
> side sustainin the loss knew the cause, while claims
> can be wrong by almost any indeterminate amount
> depending on many circumstances. That is, high
> claims cannot by themselves prove loss records
> wrong. I know many take a more complicated approach
> when it comes to Soviet claims and US losses in
> Korea.
> 
> I do know one other smaller conflict where Soviet
> claim accuracy can be compard to Korea (I mentioned
> once long before), the 1939 Nononhan/Khalkin Gol
> border war with Japan. Soviet claims by most sources
> totalled 660 JAAF a/c in air combat. Losses from
> post WWII Japanese sources range from 90-115. Latter
> number is from Coox's landmark "Nomonhan" (mainly
> about the stunning Soviet victory on the ground)
> using Japanese general staff records, my count of
> what he mentions some losses AAA or other. Assuming
> 100 losses this would be broadly in line with the
> Soviet claim accuracy in Korea: enemy losses ~15% of
> Soviet claims (seems possibly a bit less in Korea).
> Total MiG losses to UN fighters seem to have been
> ~70's% of confirmed UN fighter victories, not
> counting a few dozen almost completely inaccurate
> B-29 claims and subject to some debate since NK MiG
> losses are not known and Soviet and Chinese ones
> have both been quoted differently over time.
> ~550-600 total MiG's v. ~800 claims. So claim
> discount ratio's in Korea seemed to vary a lot by
> AF, not just by experience of individual pilot.
> Digression: As a general devil's advocate about all
> pilots in all AF's in all wars, isn't it possible
> higher scoring pilots were so partly because they
> were more enthusiastic claimers? Documentation of
> ace claims I've seen have a tendency to assume real
> losses on the other side correspond to the ace's
> claim, not his lessor known sdn mates' claims in the
> same combats, but it's really very hard to know who
> shot down who exactly in most cases. It's not
> intuitive to me higher scorers would score a higher
> % of real kills relative to their higher claims
> though I wouldn't rule it out. Pilot experience
> wouldn't seem the key point as much as somewhat
> related factor, unit success. I think it's indicated
> by many episodes that the side that feels less hard
> pressed in the combat claims more accurately. That
> is heavier losses tend to go with more exaggerated
> claims, and the VVS seems to usually have been the
> ones taking the heavier losses in 1939, GPW and
> Korea unless all three opponents cooked their books
> (actually the JAAF though outscoring the VVS
> probably between 3:2 and 2:1 in 1939 exaggerated
> their claims almost as much). Anyway, VVS accuracy
> in Korea seems similar to at least one ealier
> conflict of theirs (1939) and USAF accuracy in Korea
> was also broadly similar to USAAF fighter claim
> accuracy in WWII in Europe 44-45 period.
> 
> Joe
> ----- Original Message -----  
> From: Harold Stockton  
> To: KOREAN-WAR-L@listproc.cc.ku.edu  
> Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2003 11:44 PM
> Subject: Re: Book review: Red Wings Over the Yalu:
> China, the Soviet Union and the Air...
> 
> 
> Mr. Sewell,
> 
> The main point that I have been trying to make in
> most of my tedious quotes from my writings is the
> fact that when it came to the fighting of the VVS in
> southern Russia in 1944, their combat claims were
> pretty closely watched for accuracy. Only after
> independent verification from other sources would a
> claim be credited. Though these factors were still
> not fool proof, they did bring them into some form
> of rational ratios as per the German claims at the
> same time. In the end, almost every combat claim was
> inflated by every nation; sometimes by as high as a
> factor of two or three hundred per cent. Even the
> German claims during this same time period were
> consistent when it came to their fighting the 15th
> AF in later 1944.
> 
> Combat tactics seemed to more closely followed in
> the Guards units, but this still did not endure that
> one of these pilots did not do something stupid or
> that they were not surprised in the middle of a
> combat mission. The main point that I wanted to make
> was the fact that the veteran VVS pilots did indeed
> give a better showing of themselves in combat than
> the newer pilots, as was also the case for the US
> pilots. Hours in the cockpit also did not translate
> to being a better combat pilot, but it did help. As
> Randy Cunningham so correctly stated, something
> like: train like you are going to fight.
> 
> Concerning combat losses on both sides of the Korean
> War, I would discount most claims in a general sense
> by a factor of 2 to 3 as you state. For the more
> experienced pilots on both sides I would use a
> factor of 0.80 to 0.90%. Better pilots on both sides
> were more apt to have been able to actually
> sustained lethal damage to their opponent.
> 
> Also I am not a linguist, I rather feel that in my
> writing I have adopted the use of using the original
> designation with its translation in a parenthetical
> statement. This is just a quirk that I prefer for
> material that I am going to have published.
> 
> Thank you for your response.
> 
> Harold
> 
> ----- Original Message -----  
> From: AMPSOne@aol.com  
> To: KOREAN-WAR-L@listproc.cc.ku.edu  
> Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2003 7:05 PM
> Subject: Re: Book review: Red Wings Over the Yalu:
> China, the Soviet Union and the Air...
> 
> 
> Harold,
> 
> I'm trying to figure out what your point is but so
> far am not absorbing it.  
> 
> I worked with Xiaoming on his book and while the
> Soviets kept very good records on their losses and
> claims, the Chinese were bigger on absolutes and not
> very 
=== message truncated ===


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