Luftwaffe losses in 1940

[Ricky B]

Okay, well I agree with the thought about losses not represented in the game having an impact on air strength in game - that is something that has never come up before, or if so is so buried in comments as in this threat that the message was lost. I thought the issue here was "why doesn't the enemy lose planes at a historical rate so I can get a lot of VPs from them" rather than "why do the German air units not drop in strength during the battle". Is that a fair summary of the issue?

Enough with numbers, outside of quantifying the losses. So the Germans lost around 600 bombers in 6 weeks, or about 100 per week, on average. In 1940, the Germans built approximately 3500 bombers, including Stukas, or nearly 300 per month, or 450 during the time period of the French campaign. So net loss, approximately 150 bombers. They had a reserve of planes, but no idea how large.

Jonny - what is the ratio of bombers present in the campaign game to the total bomber numbers you have dug out? I don't have time to check, but come up with that and maybe allocate that ratio of strength to the losses and see what the net losses would be for the full 6 weeks, then maybe take half that to represent the heavier fighting during this campaign period than later on.

Just a way of seeing what possible impact the losses were. Ultimately, being able to see what the ground attack missions launched by the Luftwaffe would be the most effective method of determining how losses and fatigue changed the number of missions during the battle, but I can't find anything on that.

Anyway, once the actual impact is determined, maybe a solution could be determined - I like a "breakdown" factor as used for tanks/vehicles, but I will be that after analyzing things as above it will be quite a bit less than you think. Definitely not 40% as the Germans did have replacement planes coming into action, and had pilots ready also.

Rick