Luftwaffe Archives in Russia - 2

[Richard T Eger]

From 12 O'Clock High!:

Charles Bavaroises
carl.charles@t-online.de
How "good" is information from Russian archives?
Mon Jul 7 11:56:40 2024
212.34.74.75

When trying to get a clearer picture of airwar in WW2 the serious researcher should always have a look on the "other side", as all participants tended to have a rather one-sided view of what happened. One a very basic level this could be simply comparing the losses- and claims of each fighting force (comparing summaries is not much more demanding, but for example comparing individuell combat-reports for great air-battles is almost impossible).

Having somewhat specialized on western front in 43/45 I know, were to look for such info for German, UK and USA units and I know about their special "weaknesses" and were to expect certain gaps or limited data. But what I am lacking is a up to date picture on Russian data. Newer publications have a lot of quite detailed information from the Russian side, but I don't know, how reliable this information is.

So I'd like to ask all those "Ostfront-Experten" out there: What is the "state of the art" regarding to Russian combat-reports, losses and claims. Is the information reliable and complete or do we have to expect gaps? Are the sources compareable to German WASt or GQM, to RAF ORBs? Is there something like "damage-cathegories", are reported losses "complete" losses (such as reported in GQM) or only a fraction (such as MACR). Is there anybody, who can teach us, what we can learn from Russian archives and were we have to be cautious.

TIA

Carl (having a lot to learn on Ostfront)