IL-2 Sturmovik Recovered from a Lake in Murmansk, Russia

[Andy_UA]

Looks like the whole "North" Army group lost only 1 fighter in combat in november 1943 according to its archives.
JCR: Do you have a link for your source?

[JCR]

Werner Girbig, Eismeerjäger, die Chronik des Jagdgeschwaders 5, Motorbuch, 1st Edition 1975.
It is a book
Problem is it contains a lot of information from german sources (Interviews with Pilots etc) but as it is from 1975, obviously nothing from the soviet side.
German claims are accepted at face value.
There's a newer book by Erich Mombeek in english on Jagdgeschwader 5 which matches german and soviet victory claims for the Arctic front air combat.
But the 3rd volume only came out in 2010 and I never bought it.
Perhaps there's a ebook version of it on some russian site?

Generally JG 5 overclaimed pretty heavily at least for the Luftwaffe, but they did cause heavy soviet losses nonetheless.
Problem with german records is that no losses do not always mean no losses.
Killed or wounded pilots and totally destroyed aircraft are usually acurately archived but if a pilot brought down a plane for a crash landing and the plane was recoverable it might not show up in loss records.

[Hollenweger]

Thanks for the translation help folks, much appreciated.

[keparti]

So 25 ME-109 air superiority fighters against 16 ground attack planes, and the germans lose 23, soviets only 11? how is that possible?

[JCR]

So 25 ME-109 air superiority fighters against 16 ground attack planes, and the germans lose 23, soviets only 11? how is that possible?

Did you f...ing read the thread?
The germans lost no planes, the soviet 11.
Also the soviets had a escort of P-39 Airacobras, at least according to german sources

However, soviet overclaiming is easily explainable.
They were fighting at low level over enemy territory and accurately counting enemy losses was neither possible nor their priotity.
Getting home alive in one piece was.
The germans fought over their territory and still claimed 36 instead of 11 planes!

[Ivan le Fou]

They want to make it fly again? Wow... it will ask a lot of work.

[JCR]

They want to make it fly again? Wow... it will ask a lot of work.

They allready did that with another Il-2.
And a MiG-3

But I think it would be better to restore it to pristine condition because to correspond to modern safety margins and standards, you basically have to build a new plane containing a few non critical original parts.