Aircraft losses statistics ?

I just took a look at the statistics in this site. The aircraft losses are mind-boggling.
Did the French *really* lost FIFTY thousand aircraft during the war?

Maybe that explains the apparent lack of combativeness of French fighter pilots. Maybe they were just concerned with surviving, perhaps their flight training was so poor, the French air force was sending men to the slaughter like in the trench below. Poorly trained pilots rarely live long enough to become expert flyes.

I mean, from examining the aces record, counting as "Ace" a pilot with at least 10 kills, while the British and the Germans are evenly matched with almost 200 British aces scoring arond 3,100 victories, while 157 German aces scored about 3,000 ( both counts conservative estimates intentionally low ) , France only produced 53 Aces with about 900 victories.

What was wrong with the French ? The Spads and Nieuports were good fighters, and I dont think the Spad XIII was so inferior to German counterparts to explain the low number of victories of the French fighters.

I once read that the Germans pilots didn't think much of their French counterparts, that shied from combat, but that must be taken with a grain of salt, giving the German contempt for the French.

Could it be that the air war was undertaken mainly by the Royal Flying Corps, and that the Germans focused their effort in the British sector of their lines, leaving the French-German front a quiet one with few aircraft operating. Lack of targets prevents high scores. It would be interesting to know how the German pilots scores were split in British and French planes downed.

Moreover, aren't the losses statistics insanelyhigh ? I mean, conventional wisdom is that only a handful of pilots are responsible for most of the enemy's casualties, but the German top aces only destroyed a fraction of the 85,000+ Allied aircraft losses. Even if we count in the pilots recorded as having scored 5-10 victories, very few airplanes were shot down. What happened ? that thousands of pilots on both sides took to the skies, downed a couple of aircraft and were promptly killed as well ?

I wonder how the losses were distributed, taking into account aircraft lost to ground fire, destroyed in the ground, accidents, and machines so damaged that they had to be scraped. But the totals still look too high, more fitting for the second world war. Perhaps losses count older model planes that were retired from service when they became outdated and scraped ?

And what about personel casulaties ? Not only the totals, but also the death ratio. Wichof the great wars was worse for flyers ? I got the impresion that the German pilots of WWII had a casualty rate similar or worse than in the first one, with a rate of 40-50% deaths.

What interest me is the (apparent ) poor show put up by the French? any explanation to this ?

Some thoughts for debate.

[Craig]

It is my intention to address only the great disparity between British and French "victories". For once, it seems fairly simple: the French had much more stringent confirmation standards - very much like the Germans. So, those 900 or so French claims are considerably more likely to be accurate (resulting in the actual destruction of a German plane) than were the 3000+ British claims.

Also there is the old debate between a victory and destruction. If you drove down an opponent denying him his mission goals - that is a victory. It may not be a DES but it has much the same effect on the war. We lose sight that this was not a sporting contest and there were no uniform standards from nation to nation or withing each nation for that matter. Numbers must be interpreted nation by nation - comparing is really apples and oranges unless detailed research is done. Also each nation did not have the same mission goals which would greatly effect the "stats".

Just points to ponder......

John

Is there something to the idea that the Germans focused the attentions of their best jastas on the British? It can't be coincidence that of Richthofen's 80 victories, exactly NONE are French...what gives here? The Flying Circus was intended to be mobile, and did move around a fair amount; but always opposite the British?

[rammjaeger]

Darío,

the "loss numbers" quotated at the Aerodrome have nothing to to with real combat losses. It is the number of aircraft written of because of ALL causes (combat, accidents, writen-off because obsoleted, transport losses ...) and is additional including also exported aircraft (at least for the Germans). Dan-San calls it aircraft wastage, the Germans called it Verbrauch (consumption) of aircraft. The question arises every half year or so - a typicall FAQ.

A number of factors combined, I believe, to account for lesser French aerial pursuit activity during the war.

The most obvious was the French habit of concentrating their best pilots into a relatively small number of units. Les Cigognes, for example, were easily the equivalent of British and German pilots in terms of aggressiveness and ability. But other units, led by and staffed with pilots who were by definition mediocre, performed much less well.

Another factor that must be considered is the lesser degree of overall activity on the French-occupied sectors of the Western Front in the period between the mutinies of 1917 and the final offensives of 1918. Many authorities on the War consider the French to have been virtually hors de combat during this period; this fact allowed the Germans to concentrate a higher percentage of their fighter jastas against the RFC/RAF.

In terms of training, I believe that French pilot training was for most of the war superior to British. And French aircraft were arguably better as well. The difference in performance is attributable to the factors described above, in combination with a less-aggressive strategic philosophy than that entertained by the RFC/RAF.

[Billy_Bishop]

First, an ace, as is accepted is any pilot who has 5 or more VICTORIES. The Germans had an unofficial title (which is what "ACE" is, unofficial) called "Kanone". To qualify for that, the stated number in numerous books is 10 Victories.

Next, the totals of British and to a certain degree, some American Aces include victories of various categories. Destroyed is just one of those categories.

DOOC or sometimes abreviated as just OOC is another category, that does not necessarily mean an enemy aircraft was destroyed.

Lesser types of Victories were DD and FTL.

DOOC= Down Out Of Control OOC is the same, but you could drop the "Down".

FTL=Forced To Land.

DD=Driven Down, i.e. forced to a lower altitude, not shot down.

Of these various types, DD and FTL were pretty much not counted after 1916 or mid 1917.

OOC was probably the most optimistic in that it was hoped that the enemy crashed. The claim was put in as OOC when the claimant didn't have the time or opportunity to watch it crash.

Consequently, British victory claims will not match German losses for that very reason alone. That, and the fact that full victory credits were granted to each pilot who was in on a single victory claim.

There is one outrageous example of 9 British pilots who each got a credit for ONE German plane shot down!!

As far as British losses go, they had a lot of training losses.

VBR,

Al Lowe

"destroyed" -- pretty obvious
out of control - speculative

"probable" - not much better

"forced to land" - hey, if he lands behind your lines it's all good, right, he won't be fighting in the near future.

"driven down" - simply refers to a lower altitude? is this similar to the free-wheeling standard of 'a seperation' applied to B17s in WWII with German pilots? it might have made you feel better, but doesn't seem like it would ammount to much.

'damaged' - that's nice

'I wanted him really, really bad!' - does this actually count for something?

'I was getting around to it!' - as a matter of fact I was planing on shooting him down myself!

it's interesting that we don't see these last two categories appear in too many combat reports discussed on this forum. I would be interested and amused to see the aces discuss their inability to shoot somebody down