"Fighter/bomber kill ratios during the bombing of Germany" Topic

Hey all. I was wondering if anyone has ever come across an official statement or suggestion in Luftwaffe records/memoirs/journals/etc. on what the Germans considered an acceptable kill ratio during the bombing campaigns against Germany.

I doubt there was any official math ("Three BF-109s=1 B-17"), but considering that the Americans were open (at least internally) to accepting high casualty rates to get the bombers through, I wonder if the Germans had some equivalent math on how many fighters they could afford to lose for every bomber they shot down. Losing their good pilots, and fuel shortages, were probably bigger factors for them, but I wonder nevertheless.

The US bomber claims for fighters shot down were ludicrously high, but were accepted without question as a means of bolstering morale………

Never seen anything in writing. My *guess* based on later planned ramming attacks would be 1:1. Given the size of the bomber streams even at 1:1 they would run out of fighters and fuel, much less pilots, before we ran out of bombers.

The "Experten" purposefully flew until they died or were incapacitated by injuries, so I doubt that was part of their equation.

Seems there were more bomber losses due to Flak than from fighters. Some stats are quoted below:

"How the other side regarded the German Flak guns then is clearly in reports of the 8th and 9th U.S. Air Fleets: "In the European theater of war, the German Flak has always been a great source of danger. In 1943, 1/3 of the total losses of bombers and 2/3 of the damaged aircraft were attributable to them"

The damage done to the bombers by the German Flak weapons reached its pinnacle in April 1944. Flak positions that were not literally overrun continued to offer stubborn resistance to all bomb attacks. In June, July and August 1944, the Flak guns were responsible for some 2/3 of the 700 total losses of bombers and up to 98% of the approximately 1300 that returned with damage (12,687 were hit by Flak fire and only 182 by fighter-plane weapons).

In the last months before the end of September 1944, between 3,360 and 4,453 allied bombers per month returned with Flak damage.

In tactical service, the question was constantly asked: Where are the cursed German Flak positions located?

In a concluding report, General Arnold stated: "We never conquered the German Flak artillery; it was never 'kaput' before it surrendered with the rest of the Wehrmacht on May 7, 1945."

From "German Flak in World War II" by Werner Muller, Schiffer Military History, ISBN: 0-7643-0399-6, page 159.

The US bomber claims for fighters shot down were ludicrously high

The whole point of the bomber formations was that any attacking fighter should be shot at by multiple bombers, so multiple claims seem reasonable. Although I'd figure on a lot of those just being fighters diving way away before climbing to re-attack.

Dye4minis is right about the concern for flak. Weren't the tactical bombings on D-day and Cobra attacks reoriented to come in over friendly troops (fleet) instead of parallel in order to avoid flak? I'm sure Leslie McNair has an opinion on the subject. Also the airborne drops on D-day were scattered all over hell because of flak.

I don't get the impression modern scientific methods dominated the thinking behind German strategy in the second half of WW2 – maybe never.

Technical nuts and bolts science they excelled at – but things like operational research seem to have been an allied, especially US, paradigm.

The Nazi leadership – the ones who made the real decisions – were all ideology. If they say stop the bombers at any cost then the men in the chain of command did just that.

I can see the losses must be over reported by the bomber crews. In the confusion any enemy aircraft shot down or even damaged would be reported by up to a dozen gunners as their kill – and higher command had every interest in encouraging over reporting for morale purposes. Especially early in the daylight raid when the crews could count their own losses and see they were missing their targets or getting sent back to hit the same target allegedly already destroyed. Morale was a huge problem.

Thanks for the responses.

@Skarper---your points ring quite true. This probably was something the Germans only thought about vaguely ("We're losing too many pilots for the damage we're inflicting") if at all.

If you would like to read a gripping memoir of aerial combat against the bombers (amongst others), check out "I Flew for the Fuhrer" by Heinz Knoke. He shot down a fair number and employed various techniques, including aerial bombs.
Being a personal narrative I don't think you can get any idea of ratios, but it's a book I couldn't put down.
It does also seem to suggest a fair amount of though was put into how best to wage the aerial campaign, but being so heavily outnumbered, especially by the fighter escort later in the war, the result was a foregone conclusion.