Cannibalization is common with air force. Any air force. Simple reason - repair is uneconomical above certain point. Think fighter or bomber moderately crashed in Kiev. What is cost of ship back aircraft to Germany, repair it, ship it back to Russia, also same time, ship spare parts like engine, wings, guns for other aircraft? Many time more easy to take plane apart, use it for spares, and ship a new plane.. German do not had shortage of machines of war. Big industry - but they lack fuel and men.
I would generally agree with that canabalization was common amongst all powers. Thats not the issue. the issue was what was happening to Me109s. there was a discussion about differeing losses, and I offered the probable reason for the discrepancy as aircraft not initially listed as lost, but eventually written off. When is a loss a loss......
Germany had a big industry. Trouble is, it was poorly organized and outputs were correspondingly low. Germany had the second biggest economy in the world, yet its outputs were generally very low. as an example, they produced about 325000 soft skinned vehicles. this is lower than even Canada
It wasnt cost of shipment, so much that caused the higher canabalization rates on the easterrn front (roughly double that of the RAF in the ME), it was an overstretched supply sytem. German armed forces in the East were heavily reliant on rail for strategic re-supply, but even as late as Autumn 1942 were only receiving 63% of their allotted tonnages of supplies. There were chronic shortages all along the front in all categories of equipment. This led to high unserviceability rates.
I would surprise me if US for example would be senting any major damage B-17 or P-51 for USA back to repair in factory.. US were not stupid. German were not stupid, which is why GPW took so long and costly to won in end.. undersestimate enemy - greatest fault, Zhukov said. Also Chin Szun Cu many thousend year before.. you do not fight believe enemy is stupid.. you fight know his strenght, and your strenght. Make him fight your strenght, so he loose..
No one is aying the Germans are stupid, although they made their fair share of mistakes. Hitler was the leader of the German armed forces. he was a soldier, but had no formal training as an officer. He tended to overrule his advisers, especially as the war progressed. Compare that to the Combined Chiefs Of Staff, all professional soldiers, all general officers, with a unified command system and a combined united approach to war strategy. Who is going to tend to act stupidly with those two respective models???????
Yes. 60-99% was scrapped. 100% was what went into ground and was aluminium dust.. 30-60% - repairable by factory. 10% - repairable by immediate unit, like few bullet holes non important places. 10-30% - repairable by mother unit, like Gruppe or Geschwader. This was so.
30-60% was repairable, but seldom was. According to both Foreman and Hayward (The Luftwaffe in the East), Germans had a tendency to scrap these moderately damaged airframes rather than repair them. It was more prevalent on the eastern front, because of the logistical difficulties, but an airframe 50% damaged is never going to fly properly again. A car suffering a 50% amount of damafge is unquestionably a write off...planes maybe a litlle more leniency, but if you have logistic problem and are battling with serviciability rates, you will choose scrapping over just sitting on the edge of the tarmac every time
Also, keep mind: % of damage was written where aircraft was destined, not aircraft destination dependant on % of damage.. % of damage was decided on base what need to be done with aircraft. Also % damage was decided by what was hit - say major component hit, no replace possibility - immindiate classify 60%.
I'll keep that in mind, but its not relevant to the issue
Aircraft above 30% was not flying, was sent to repair centrers, repairt, rebuilt, flown again.
At 30% its a possibility, for an air force with logisitc problems, struggling to keep units airborne, anything much above that, not a chance
Sorry this sounds very incorrect... what obsession? Just above you write operational readiness rates were reported to fall below 40% towards 1941 on Eastern Front campaign.. contradict, is not?
Not a contradiction at all. Again I refer you to Hayward. He goes into detail about this. Readiness rates are different to frontline strengths. Readiness rates are those numbers ready to fly. Frontline strengthds are those aircraft on strength. Hitler was never interested in readiness rates, he only wanted strengths. His obsession with numbers is well known and well documented, and his sycophantic staffs pandied to that.
The Operational commands hardly ever gave operational readiness rates above the operational command levels to the central command, at least not to reports that Hitler would see. The best operational readiness rate after 1941, was achieved by Richthofens command, just prior to the bombardment of Sevastopol, at 73% overall. Thereafter in that Fall Blau offensive the readiness rates dropped to an average of just over 50%, before plumetting to just over 25% in the winter.
I do not think there was special shortage. LW service rate - very similiar to USSR, UK, USA air forces - roughly 70% typical in war. Better when unit doing nothing, less, when far from supply chain and in hard action. Normal. Fighter Command had 60% readiness in Combat of England. Shortage of spares, too? I think there is theoriy of conspiration here...
With the exception of the Reich defences, this is simply untrue. On the eastern front readiness rates dropped to around 50%, in Summer, and less than 30% in winter. This was before there were any fuel shortages. After the fuel began to run out, in the latter part of '44, readiness rates outside the Reich dropped to less than 10%. Only over the Reich itself were the germans able to maintain a comparable readiness rate.
Over Alamein in'42, Alles had a readiness rate approaching 85%, before the offensive opened. german readiness rates were about 63% from memory ( I can dig my notes if you are interested). In similar situations, and conditions, the Germans were outclassed as they were in everything relating to supply and logistics. Murray examines this in a great deal of detail in his book, and whilst I admit his bias in his conclusions, his research is first rate.
Soviet rates were about 60% in Summer, dropping to about 30-40% in Winter. For the allies their worst commands were in the South Pacific, where readiness rates could drop to very low levels temporarily, but from the end of 1942, were never below 60%. And this was with a supply chanin several thousand miles long, and under constant threat. In Europe, the major home commands never really dropped to less than 75%, summer or winter. This is reflected in the sortie rates incidentally. Granted the Germans were outnumbered, but they were also outsortied, even on a per aircraft basis. And not by a small amount....by miles in fact