The Soviet system did not particularly emphasize pilot safety and they continued to endure heavy losses through the end of the war. This is a separate issue from gaining the ability to enforce local air superiority as needed after the Battle of the Kuban river (this was the first and perhaps most heavily contested case where they did).
However that said, raw numbers can be misleading in many ways.
As we know, when counting operational losses, that includes a lot of basic accidents, maintenance problems, navigation errors, landing and takeoff accidents, running out of fuel and so on. This kind of thing incidentally was low for the Luftwaffe for the first half of the war but ticked up noticeably by mid 1943, probably due to changes in pilot training.
So a certain percentage of sorties result in crashes or other losses, in many cases this amounts to a large percentage of the total number number of losses. Depending on aircraft type and other factors (Winter in Russia being a particularly difficult time for flying) it can be from 30-40% of the losses.
Furthermore, certain types of missions expose the aircraft to severe risks from AAA. Perhaps highest among these are low-level CAS missions, which were notoriously dangerous especially against the Germans.
Based on what I was just looking at on this site
here*, I see the following numbers:
In May 1943, for the Luftwaffe on the Russian front:
~500 fighters (454 day fighters, 52 'long range fighters', and 9 night fighters)
~500 Medium bombers
574 "Ground attack aircraft" (I assume these are Stukas, HS 123 and HS 129)
~400 recon planes
For a total of 1598 'combat aircraft' and 2,133 aircraft of all types in May 1943, down from 1,894 / 2,796 the year before. This is of course just German and doesn't include Italian, Romanian, Finnish or Bulgarian aircraft. Reduction in strength is mainly due to fighters and some bombers sent to North Africa / Italy or for air defense of Germany, with additional ground attack aircraft being brought in to Russia.
For the Soviets in 1943 I see:
6,777 fighters (up from 3,468 in may 1942)
3,505 Ground Attack (mostly Sturmovik but probably also including I-153 etc.. this is up from 331 in May 1942.)
2,667 Bombers (up from 1,170 in 1942)
540 Recon which stayed the same from 1942.
For a total of 16,657 aircraft.
Then losses show 3,128 for the Luftwaffe (not counting their Axis partners) and 11,200 for the Soviets. Hence your 1-3 ratio.
But lets compare losses to forces here. The
Luftwaffe had 2,133 aircraft deployed on the Russian Front of which they lost 3,128.
146% of their aircraft were lost.
The
Soviets had 16,657 of which they lost 11,200. That is a loss rate of roughly
67% of operational aircraft.
When we see 3-1 odds, the assumption is that these are all victims of the
experten, shot down by fighters in desperate, heroic against the odds combat. But the reality is probably far more prosaic. The reality is that the Luftwaffe units were under heavy pressure. The VVS, PVO and Soviet Navy units were as well of course, but as a percentage of the much larger number of units deployed, they actually didn't take as many losses.
If you look at the Soviet force numbers, you can see that while fighters roughly doubled from May 1942,
ground attack aircraft increased by a factor of 10 - 3,505 from 331. Ground attack aircraft had the most hazardous mission of the war barring kamikaze strikes. Heavily laden, cumbersome Il2s had a fairly high accident rate, and were very vulnerable to ground fire. I don't know the exact breakdown of Soviet losses for the year off hand, but I bet if you drill down into it you'll observe the following:
- A high number are from operational losses - maintenance, accidents etc. probably 30-40% depending on the season.
- Of the remainder i.e. combat losses, a high number are of ground attack aircraft.
- And of the rest, fighter and bomber losses, a high number of those are on ground attack missions.
In 1943 the Germans were fighting on four fronts - the West facing England, Reich defense against heavy bomber raids, Italy and the Med, and the Russian Front. In the Russian front they were losing about 1/4 of their aircraft losses. But whereas a big part of the mission of Western raids and the Strategic Bombing offensive was explicitly to destroy the Luftwaffe, in Russia that was not the goal. The goal was to annihilate the German army, which they did albeit at great cost. A big proportion of this loss was by ground attack aircraft. By one estimate I read 12,000 Il-2's alone were lost by the Soviets during the war. These numbers can be debated, but there is no doubt that the 'concrete bomber', as tough as it was, paid a heavy price for the destruction of the German army. But they were quite critical in that role, of that there can be no doubt (at least not in my mind).
The Luftwaffe also emphasized the individual success rates of the pilots. They flew missions to help guarantee high air to air scores often at the expense of support of the ground forces. I know that in North Africa and the Med this caused a lot of angst and animosity both within the Luftwaffe and between the Luftwaffe and the Heer. I haven't plunged in depth to the same extent in the Russian front but I suspect you had a similar dynamic.
And yet in spite of that, a large percentage of Soviet losses were due to their flying much more aircraft in hazardous conditions and of that 3-1 ratio, probably 1.5 of it was due to flak and accidents and a heavy proportion were of ground attack aircraft.
*If you don't like this source or these numbers I can crack open some books and cite pages. This one is convenient because it's online.
