German airforce is lopsided

[Ricky B]

It has been awhile, but I always thought losses to flak were part of the reported losses and so the attacker would lose some even if no actual air combat occurred. Also, at this stage in the war historically, the Germans still retained a large experience advantage even where they didn't have better plans and so achieved a good loss ratio. At Kursk, I think the overall loss ratio was around 8:1, with some days being more than 10:1, dropping toward 4:1 on other days. This included flak, and what I hadn't heard about until a recent book - the Soviets had a number of pilots that got lost returning to base and never appeared again, due to poor training and poorly working navigation equipment. They were trained to stay together and the leader would navigate, but after a fight they might lose sight of the leader.

So still excessive as you note, but that is so common with the calcs used in so many games.

Rick