Irretrievable casualties inflicted upon the Red Army

[Dénes]

Comparison between losses inflicted/suffered are realistic only if we know the official loss figures of both sides. Such a (rare) case is the Battle of Odessa.

[Victor]

[quote]Comparison between losses inflicted/suffered are realistic only if we know the official loss figures of both sides. Such a (rare) case is the Battle of Odessa.[/quote]

Wel, in the case of the Eltingen beachhead, for example, since no Soviet soldiers got away, the casualties reported by the Axis are credible, since all the Soviet dead and wounded were there to be counted.

[dragos]

[quote]Another case, albeit exceptional, would be the defense of 6th Mountain Battalion during the Soviet offensive in Caucasus, in January 1943, where the losses were estimated at 5000 dead for the Soviets, and 5 dead and 10 wounded for Romanians.[/quote]

[quote]Comparison between losses inflicted/suffered are realistic only if we know the official loss figures of both sides. Such a (rare) case is the Battle of Odessa.[/quote]

In the example above, 5000 is the aproximative number of counted bodies. Number of wounded is unknown by the Romanian side.

[Dénes]

What I've tried to say is that we should have the official data on losses from the archives of both opposing parties, not the figures from one source only. The 5,000+ dead from the above example will probably never be accepted by the Soviet side.

See, for example, the discrepancy on Soviet losses between the Rumanian estimates [60,000 casualties, in addition to 16,000 POWs (mostly deserters) and 20,000 wounded] and official Soviet data [16,578 men, dead or missing, and 24,690 wounded], i.e. 1:2.3 ratio, regarding the Battle for Odessa.

[dragos]

The number of 5000 bodies is not an official report, but a figure in a journal. In the same journal it is stated that: The great Soviet offensive of January 12 1943, whose objective was the breaking of the defensive position of 6th Mountain Battalion and reaching Krimskaya, in order to fulfill the encirclement of German-Romanian forces in the Caucasian perimeter (17th German Army and six Romanian divisions), failed due to the heroic resistance of 6th Mountain Battalion "Beius".

Since 5 dead and 10 wounded does not involve much approximation, I would be interested in the Soviet version too.

[Dénes]

An example of conflict between claims and actual losses is the air battle between the I.A.R. 81Cs of Gr. 6 vân. and P-38Js of the 71st F.S. on June 10, 1944. Although the Rumanian pilots were credited with 23 aircraft shot down, the 71st F.S. actually lost only seven Lightnings over Rumania.