Romanian troops during battle of Budapest 1944-45, I need help

The same statistics for the first half of the Army's first campaign (June 22-July 31, 1941):
Dead: 5.16% officers, 1.97% NCOs, 92.87% troops.
Wounded: 4.22% officers, 1.54% NCOs, 94.2% troops.
MIA: 0.92% officers, 0.46% NCOs, 98.61% troops.

Total Army personnel losses between June 22, 1941 and August 23, 1944 (so-called Eastern Front):
Dead: 4.16% officers, 2.35% NCOs, 93.49% troops.
Wounded: 3.39% officers, 1.99% NCOs, 94.6% troops.
MIA: 1.93% officers, 1.74% NCOs, 96.34% troops.

Total Army personnel losses between August 24, 1944 and May 12, 1945 (so-called Western Front):
Dead: 3.79% officers, 3.30% NCOs, 92.91% troops.
Wounded: 3.60% officers, 3.34% NCOs, 93.06% troops.
MIA: 1.52% officers, 1.86% NCOs, 96.62% troops.

It appears that indeed, the percentage of dead officers and NCOs in the battle of Budapest is below the average, while of the number of wounded only the NCOs fared better than the average.

Your conclusions?

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on January 11, 2005 03:24 am

Below is a map (in Hungarian), which depicts the advance of Rumanian troops inside Pest, during the closing stage of the Battle of Budapest, between 4-15 Jan. 1945.
The map will illustrate a book dealing with the Siege of Budapest, currently under work, by a publishing house in Budapest.

If there is interest, I can post two other maps detailing the previous advances of Rumanian troops in Hungary (between late Oct.-late Dec. 1944).

Gen. Dénes

P.S. The maps are copyrighted.

Attached Image

A detailed map of the artillery positions of the Romanian 7th Army Corps (from Istoria artilerie romane - 1977)

Attached Image

Obviously, the date in the centre of the map is erroneous. It's not Jan. 15 (the last combat day for the Rumanian troops), but it should rather be Jan. 7 or so.

Also, the map's legends mentions only German troops and completely omits the Hungarian ones - the bulk of Pest's defenders.

Gen. Dénes

The map focuses on Romanian artillery, and the book is from 1977

Finally, I received a complimentary copy of the book dealing with the siege of Budapest in 1944/1945, published last February in Budapest, titled 'Az elsodort város' (The Swept-Away City) I co-authored.

My study included in the book focuses on the activity of the Rumanian 7th Corps in the 'Budapest Operation' (October 1944-January 1945), giving a detailed, day-by-day picture of the heavy fights inside the city (Dec. 31, 1944 - Jan. 15, 1945).

The following posts will contain scans of various pages of the study that might be interpreted easier by non-Hungarian readers and also might be of wider interest.

If anyone needs further clarifications and short translations, just let me know.

Gen. Dénes

Excerpt of the opening page ('Participation of the Rumanian 7th Corps in the Occupation of Pest').



This post has been edited by Dénes on June 23, 2005 12:41 am

Order of Battle of the Rumanian 7th Corps during the Budapest Operation (Oct. 1944-Jan. 1945).







This post has been edited by Dénes on June 23, 2005 12:46 am

List of Rumanian officers and NCOs fallen during the siege of Budapest (the second scans contains the notes to the numbers included in the main table).

Cumulative table of day-by-day losses (n.a. = no data available).

According to the numbers posted by Dénes, during the battle for Budapest the Romanian units suffered 1698 casualties (289 killed + 1409 wounded) for two of the three divisions involved in operations. Assuming about the same incidence of casualties for the third division, the total losses of the Romanian units amounted to about 2500-3000. At the same time, other sources mention that the Seventh Romanian Army Corps suffered more than 10000 casualties during the siege of Budapest, i.e. more than three times the number inferred from Dénes' sources.

Which of these two numbers of casualties is closest to the truth, 3000 or 10000?

The number you are referring to (more precisely 10,708 casualitites, i.e. KIA, WIA, MIA and POW) happened during the entire 'Budapest Operation' C7A was involved in (not only the actual 16-day siege of the capital) and occured in about three months.
The overall loss statistics for the 16 days of fierce combat inside Budapest stands at 107 officers, 124 NCOs and 5299 privates, which amounts to approx. 20% of the total number of soldiers who took part in combat.

The above table was compiled from the daily loss returns of the said divisions, included in the daily combat reports.
It has to be noted that for some reason MIA and POW were not included in the original loss statistics (although photographs show that Rumanian soldiers did fall POW during the battle for Budapest). Also, losses of units directly subordinated to C7A (see Order of Battle) usually were not included in the above daily statistics, due to incomplete data (compare, for example, the namely losses of officers and NCOs with the overall statistics for January 15). They appear only in the right column, which independently sums up the total losses of all units subordinated to C7A.

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on June 25, 2005 04:03 am

Thanks for the clarification. The new numbers cast another light both on the losses and on the events.

Carol I, Operation Budapest started in 29 October 1944 and the 7th Cops was involved also in the fights in the city's outskirts, not only inside it.

I previously thought that the 10000 casualties referred only to the short siege of Budapest and thus I wondered whether this number was an error or an exaggeration. But after Dénes came with the further explanations I got the numbers right.