Some comments needed

http://czechwar.vwings.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1156

Can someone comment on mr. Bergstrom's afirmations ? Please remember we were strictly talking about german/romanian fighter ratio - not bombers or anything else.I have had a hard time convincing people that romanians made a huge effort at Stalingrad (being called nationalist, blamed to be romanian, etc.) - finally I convinced people that romanians were there, now they start wondering about: yeah right - they were there but they were some bloody n00bs so the romanian fighters compared to german fighters at Stalingrad, seat back and did nothing.
Now I read the opinion of Bergstorm who is a very respected writer in IL2 comunity... is there anyway to prove those people that romanian airmen (fighters) did an equal effort as the germans ? (even if flying less planes - the effort was not smaller).

Due to the way I was treated by the admin, I had to quit that virtual war but I still read what others talked about Stalingrad and the facts they showed.So you should understand why I am not posting there anymore.

This post has been edited by D13-th_Mytzu on June 09, 2005 02:14 pm

Mytzu,At Stalingrad a certain 109 unit(I cannot tell you wich one,bit I'm sure that Denes or Victor can)was fling from the same airfield with a German Stuka squad-giving protection.
One morning the Stukas and the Germans disapear and the Romanians found themself with Russian tanks on the horizon....
Germans weren't always good camarades.

That was Gr. 7 Vt. traped at Karpovka on 24th or 25th november I think.
However I could use some info on romanian hours flown by fighter units during september/october at Stalingrad.
Also some say PZL11 was emplyed at Stalingrad, I tried to explain to them that during battle of Stalingrad PZL11 were used as trainers in flying schools - is there anyway I can make this clear to them ? I find it very difficult to convince someone of what happened, especially when there are so little works written in english about romanian contribution to ww2.

Christer Bergstrom is a respected author everywhere, not only in the gamers comunities. However, I do not know exactly what are the sources he uses for ARR and how much he has gone in depth studying Romania and its aviators, from original documents. The fact that in vol I of BC/RS there is a mention of the baseless theory regarding the raid on Kosice on 26 June 1941, involving presumably Romanian P.37s from the 4th Bomber Group, is regrettable. Otherwise it's an excellent book.

Browsing through the Vanatorul IAR-80 I can see that the 6th Fighter Group totalled 718 sorties in the Stalingrad campaign and the 8th some 668. That is 1,386 together. And these were less than a quarter of the total number of planes engaged (although the fighters were the most used). The Combat Air Grouping flew around 5,000 sorties in the Stalingrad campiagn. The number of confirmed claims was three times higher than mentioned by C. Bergstrom. This was due to several causes. The stricter kill confirmation procedure in force since 1942, the predominant escort missions flew by the Romanians, contrary to the free-hunts of the Luftwaffe, the difficulties in servicing the numerous IAR-80 in the conditions at Stalingrad (the problem with the oil filters, because of the dust), the smaller experience of many Romanian pilots.

Hi D13th-Mytzu,

This is what it says on p.295 of "Third Axis, Fourth Ally".

"The 1942 Campaign: Conclusion.

Between 16 October 1942 and 15 January 1943 the units of the GAL flew more than 3,900 sorties, including at least 339 army co-operation, 149 reconnaissance, 1,345 fighter and 1,306 bomber sorties. About 2,000 tons of bombs were dropped. At least 61 Soviet aircraft were claimed, 39 of them in air combat. This relatively low figure is probably explained by the fact that the much larger Luftwaffe contingent near Stalingrad, which maintained a strength vaying between 500 and 900 aircraft, dominated the Red Air Force for most of the campaign, and the Soviets were usually reluctant to engage Axis aircraft. FARR........Aerial losses appear to have been about 26 aircft, the cause in almost all of the known incidents being AA fire, while the remainder were unserviceable aircraft overrun by the Red Army.

The overwhelming presence of VIII Flegerkorps makes it difficult to establish any distinctive operational impact by the FARR in 1942. However, a similar phenomenon to 1941 can be observed in the increasing reliance on Romanian-built aircraft as the campaign progressed, so that during December 1942 the GAL was most truly a Romanian air force. Eighty percent of its combat sorties were flown by Romanian-designed IAR37s, IAR38s, IAR39s, IAR80s and IAR81s or Romanian-built JRS79Bs. Only Grup 5 Bombardament's He111H-3s (and a few H-6s just arriving) represented a significant foreign contribution, and their continued availability was probably due to the fact that there were sufficient spares for their engines because the Romanians had ordered 210 Jumo 211D-1 and 211F engines for the JRS79B and B1 in 1939. Although December 1942 was a difficult and unrewarding period for operations, the mere presence of the FARR at the front in any strength, however limited its effect, owed far more to Romania's development of its own aircraft industry than to tardy German deliveries."

Cheers,

Sid.

Thank you Sid !

What I am most interested is fighter activity at Stalingrad - romanian vs. german.
As far as I know, GAL at Stalingrad was under the command of Luftflotte4, that makes me ask a question: when someone said that german units of Luftflotte4 operating in Stalingrad area, made X sorties - does it also include the romanian sorties ?
Also, JG3 had its airfields much closer to the frontline then the romanian IAR-80/81 and Bf109-E units, so a romanian pilot was making lets say 3 sorties per day flying a total of 6 hours (this is just an example, I do not have exact data) and a german pilot could make 5 sorites per day but the amount of hours airborne would not be much different - can someone confirm or "infirm" this theory pls ?

My problem was: at first the comunity where this problem apeared, started telling me that germans had much more fighters then romanians (I gave them a 3:1 ratio in favor of german planes, they said it is totally wrong), after I made a research I was able to show them actual data: romanians had 105 fighters (IAR80/81 + Bf109-E) while the germans achieved a peack (257 Bf109-G2 + Bf109-F4) of fighters during 2 weeks in september, when JG3 flotilla + JG52 flotilla + I/JG53 group were all at the same time active in Stalingrad area, however JG52 was sent back to Caucasus and i?JG53 was sent to Mediterana.So my ratio of 3:1 german:romanian FIGHTERS was more then optimistic.
After they saw the data, they understood I was right about the numbers, however they started to whine about romanian fighter pilots not flying as much as german pilots and only being assigned to limited actions, the proofs they showed were: german victories vs. romanian victories, german TOTAL number of sorties (fighters, assault/jabo, bombers, recon, etc.) which I think also includes romanian sorties, but none of them presented fighter sorties alone, or even better: hours flown by german fighter pilots vs. hours flown by romanian fighter pilots - so according to their "arguments" romanian fighter pilots flew at least 20 times less then german fighter pilots - which is basically impossible considering the ratio of fighters was even low then 3:1 and romanian fighters were airborne as much as they could (from what I saw reading Dan Antoniu's book - I even made a statistic which day to day operations throughout september and october).

Is any of you intersted in making such research with me ? I think it is very interesting to find out such data, it will clearly prove the romanian involvment at Stalingrad, involvment that almost everyone prefere to ignore.

This post has been edited by D13-th_Mytzu on June 11, 2005 05:12 pm

Hi D13th-Mytzu,

I think the numerical scale of the Romanian air presence at Stalingrad is well documented.

However, its quality relative to the Germans must be questioned.

As you point out, the Germans were flying Bf109Fs and Gs, which were more modern than the older Romanian Bf109Es. Furthermore, the majority of Romanian fighters were Romanian IAR80s, which were not of the same quality as the Bf109E, F or G. Thus simply counting numbers of fighters gives a false impression. On top of this, the IAR81 was not even exclusively a fighter.

The Germans had the most experienced and successful fighter pilots in the world, some having been on operations as early as 1937 in Spain. Furthermore, Fliegerkorps VIII at Stalingrad was their most powerful air formation. Romania's fighter pilots were raw by comparison, having had at most about 4 months operational experience the previous year. Even Romanians such as Serbanescu who gained high scores in 1943-44 came away from Stalingrad with comparitively little.

As the Germans were a highly industrialised society with long experience of operating the Bf109, it is likely that, all other things being equal, their serviceability rate was higher than that of the Romanians, who were from a more agrarian, less technically proficient society with less experience of operating high performance, low-wing, monoplane fighters.

I would suggest that there are very god reasons to doubt that Romanian aircraft performed anywhere near as well as German aircraft at Stalingrad. Indeed, it would be little short of miraculous if they did.

The main point about the Romanian air presence at Stalingrad was that it was the best and largest force that Romania could put into the field so far from home and it was still qualitatively superior to its opponents. Thus it was definitely an asset to the Germans.

However, I would suggest that to expect the GAL to have achieved the very high standards of the Germans at that time is to ask too much.

Cheers,

Sid.

Sid I never even questioned what you just said here.I agree germans had more experiened pilots and better planes, it is normal and it would be absurd not to agree with it.Maybe I did not express myself corectly and you missunderstood me.
The problem was not about plane/pilots quality, the problem was about the activity of both sides when it comes to putting pilots up in the skies, their results while being up there was never an issue.So again here is what I need to find out: were romanian pilots more lazy then german pilots and flew less ? By flying less I do not mean flying less sorties per total, but taking one pilot from each side, compare the number of hours flown during one day.My guess is that the difference between hours flown between 1 german fighter pilot and 1 romanian fighter pilot at Stalingrad is not THAT big as some suggest (20:1), it should be quite close (I'd say at maximum 2:1 - meaning a german pilot would fly twice more hours per day then a romanian pilot - but I even doubt that).

So, again to make things clear: ny concern was never about fighter planes/pilots quality, but their daily activity: number of hours flwon by one pilot - only like this I can compare the effort/activity of both airforces.
To say that romanians did not make much effort at Stalingrad, just because they had lower equipment and less experienced pilots is wrong.Even with low-tech planes and non-experienced pilots you can still make a big effort (look at VVS )

This post has been edited by D13-th_Mytzu on June 12, 2005 01:39 pm

Hi D13th-Mytzu,

That is too specialised a question for me, but I agree that a ratio of 20:1 sounds greatly exaggerated.

Assumimg "Third Axis, Fourth Ally" is right and the Romanians flew 1,345 fighter sorties between 16 October and 15 January, the Germans with your presumed three times as many fighter aircraft would have to have flown 1,345 x 3 x 20 = 80,700 fighter sorties in the same period to achieve a 20:1 sortie-per-pilot ratio over the Romanians. If I remember rightly, the Czech link states that the Germans flew only about a quarter as many sorties as this over a longer period.

I would therefore suggest that it is extremely unlikely that the ratio was above 5:1, but it is equally extremely unlikely that it was as low as 1:1. However, until someone comes up with more detailed figures, it seems impossible to be more authoritative.

One more thing. Looking at the Romanian figures for 16 October to 15 January, each Romanian fighter seems to have flown only about 13 sorties in 13 weeks. This is about 1 sortie per week. It therefore does not look as though Romanian fighter pilots were overburdened during this period!

Cheers.

Sid.

I think there is something wrong.. here is a list of IAR-80/81 sorties in october:


1 October 1942:
Gr 6 Vt : On Tusov airfield with 25 IAR-81 (Escadrila 61 + 62)
Gr 8 Vt : On Tusov airfield with 40 IAR-80 (Esc. 41, 42 and 60)

2 October 1942:
* no info – I think because some squadrons from Gr 8 Vt were sent to Rostov for planes maintenance due to severe problems with dust affecting the engines

3 October 1942:
Gr 6 Vt : escort for IAR-81 dive bombers and He-111 bombers at Stalingrad (12:15 – 13:30), 6 IAR-81 as dive bombers on Stalingrad (12:30 – 13:25), 4 IAR-81 as dive bombers on Stalingrad (15:30 – 16:35), 2 IAR-81 freehunt above Stalingrad

4 October 1942:
Gr 6 Vt : Esc 61 + Esc 62 with IAR-81 on Tusov ; 2 dive bombing missions on Stalingrad with 7 and 6 IAR-81
Gr 8 Vt : Esc 41 + Esc 42 + Esc 60 with IAR-80 on Tusov

5 October 1942:
Gr 6 Vt : 4 IAR-81 dive bomb on tractor factory in Stalingrad
Gr 8 Vt : 6 IAR-80 from Esc 41 + 8 IAR-80 from Esc 60 go from Tuzov to Morozovskaya

6 October 1942:
Gr 6 Vt : going to Morozovskaya
Gr 8 Vt : operating from Morozovskaya

7 October 1942:
* no info on IAR at Stalingrad – only the ones in Romania/Odessa

9 October 1942:
* info only about Gr 3 Vt (esc 43) with IAR-80 which cancelled its order to go to Yevpatoria instead they were ordered to go to Kerch.

10 – 11 October 1942:
* no info at all

12 – 30 October 1942:
Gr3 + Gr 6 + Gr 8 Vt : recon missions, dive bombing missions, escort missions, freehunt missions, days similar to 30 october..

30 October 1942:
Gr 6 + Gr 8 Vt : flying between Morozovskaya – Bakovskaia – Perelasovski because they had many missions to deal with.From Morozovskaya 1 freehunt mission and landing at Bakovskaia form there 1 freehunt mission in Kletskaya area, landing at Perelazovzki, from there 1 escort mission to He-111 with 4 IAR-81 in Sorkoi – Surinacenskaia area, 1 escort mission for JRS-79 with 4 IAR-81.From Bakovskaia 1 freehunt mission with 4 IAR-80, from Perelasopvki 1 freehunt mission with 3 IAR-80, 1 alarm mission with 2 IAR-80, 1 He-111 escort mission with 4 IAR-80, dive bombing Rakovka railway station, fighting 7 Yaks (2 confimred kills for IAR-80), PZL-Karas escort missionin Kletskaya area with 2 IAR-80, 1 alarm mission with 2 IAR-80.Esc 41 + Esc 42 freehunt in Kletskaya area, bomber escort to Mihailvka (IAR80 pilot Alexandrescu Stefan kills 1 Yak), freehunt in Kalmikovski area with 2 planes, freehunt in Verkij-Fominski with 4 planes.
List goes on for this day but I will stop here.

This post has been edited by D13-th_Mytzu on June 12, 2005 02:55 pm

Hi D13th-Mytzu,

There isn't necessarily anything wrong.

For a start, the periods covered are different. Your dates are mostly earlier in October when the Romanian units were recently arrived and at or near full strength, their serviceability was high, and the weather was better. The "Third Axis, Fourth Ally" period starts on 16 October and goes on through the winter when serviceability must have dropped and the weather deteriorated.

An average of one sortie per aircraft per week would give an average of a little over three IAR81 sorties per day for the 24 machines at Stalingrad. Over the period 1-7 October the 24 IAR81s of Grup 6 seem to have flown 29 combat sorties. This is an average of four sorties by IAR81s each day - not much more than one sortie per aircraft per week.

The 31 October figure of 31 sorties by IAR80s and 81s looks good, but is only about half the number of aircraft theoretically available. This suggests that serviceability may already have been down to about 50%.

I would suggest that the late October figures may well have been the high point of Romanian aerial activity over Stalingrad. As the weather got worse, serviceability fell and fewer sorties were possible. For example, reportedly no sorties at all could be flown on the vital day of 19 November, because the weather was too bad. After that airfields were lost, Grup 7 lost its ground services and most units were gradually repatriated, so by January there was probably very little Romanian air activity to report. When averaged out over the three months, an average of one sortie per fighter per week over 16 October to 15 January is by no means impossible.

Cheers,

Sid.

It is my fault I forgot to mention one thing - we were only interested of fighter activity for both sides untill 19th november 1942, main reason is that after the offensive the situation became otally diffferent, so the Stalingrad campaign in this virtual war I was playing was split in 2: german offensive and soviet offensive.My research was exclusivelly about german offensive.

As you said there were some problems with planes serviceability, at some point all Gr8 vt was sent to Rostov for maitenance, then it got back.I will have to look closer at this issue to figure out how many IAR's were ready for combat each day.However, when I did the math for german planes I only considered the higher number of planes in 1 month, not counting losses or not serviceable planes.I think it is very difficult to obtain 100% acurate results, so I am looking for an avarage, then I will input an error and take it out from the avarage I got (example of error: it was more probable for an IAR to become non-serviceable then a Bf109, romanian had 2 groups of IAR and 1 of 109, germans had exclusively 109's => higher chance of romanian to have bigger ratio of non-serviceable aircraft).

How I want to make this research: take total number of fighters, take total number of hours flown, divide the two and get avarage number of hours flown by a fighter pilot.Do this for both airforces then compare - I will get avarage number of hours flown by 1 pilot.This will be ideal number - never reached by either side, here comes the error counting I was talking about.Any thoughts about this system I want to use ? Do you think it would be better to find out exactly the number of serviceable aircrafts for a day, get number of hours flown that day then do the math ? the problem with this is that I will probably be unable to find data about hours flown per day, and only get it for a bigger period (like one month); that means I have to calculate serviceable aircrafts for 1 month (which might be almost impossible).

This post has been edited by D13-th_Mytzu on June 12, 2005 08:39 pm

I'm on the run, so only a short comment.

The 7th Fighter Group had executed in 3 months at Stalingrad (Sep, Oct and Nov) a total 855 sorties. There were only 15 air engagements (in 277 missions). This explains quite a lot why the number of kills was so low. Usually Romanian aircraft were relegated to bomber escort role, which did not leave too much room for maneuver. And since VVS fighters weren't too keen on crossing the front line to the west, the number of dogfights with Romanian fighters was accordingly low.

Btw, adding up the figures for the 7th Fighter Group, it seems that the Romanian fighters flew more than 2,200 sorties at Stalingrad.

Doesn anyone have the numbers and day to day activity for 7th FG ?

Hi Victor and D13th-Mytzu,

If about 36 fighters of Gp.7 flew 855 sorties in three months, that would indicate about 24 sorties each during that 13 week period, or about two a week on average.

Cheers,

Sid.