the raw numbers

[Igo kyu]

Originally Posted by Furio

Are you saying that captured on the ground aircraft shouldn’t be counted? Why not? Air, ground and sea forces fight the same war.
Even if we focus more on air combat, a thing is clear: if Luftwaffe were capable of winning the Battle of Britain, maintain air superiority over Russia, and defend oil fields by Allied bombing, then Germany would have won the war.
If we focus on fighters versus fighter combat, we forget that bombers were the real offensive weapons with a real impact on the battlefield. During war years, Luftwaffe bombers diminished constantly as fighters grew in number constantly, transforming an offensive arm in a purely defensive one.
War ended in April 1945, but Luftwaffe ceased to exist as an organized combat force probably in January, being thoroughly defeated. Almost all of its surviving aircraft were captured before Germany surrender.

If we are talking about the combat capabilities of the aircraft and pilots, then I don't see how ground captures at their home base enters into that. If the pilot lands at the wrong airbase by mistake, then that's a pilot error, but landing at the right base isn't an error that the pilot made, though it may be an error of a higher authority.

The Luftwafe wasn't even close to winning the BoB in hindsight, though it probably wasn't possible to see that at the time.

I'm not sure that the Luftwafe having complete air superiority over Russia would necessarily have resulted in a German win. Russian tanks were very good, and it is hard to destroy tanks from the air. In France, it was morale that the Stukas shattered, which was crucial, but what pecentage of the physical destruction was achieved by the Luftwafe isn't clear and may well have been low.

With the USA in the war, there was no way for Germany to match the overall allied production potential, the USA could have matched them alone, the USSR could have matched them alone, Britain alone might have struggled a bit to free Europe but there was no way a refought BoB in 1941 was anything other than a British win, and the Fleet was hugely powerful.