User talk:Mjroots/List of military aircraft lost in combat

Suggestions

Please use this section for any questions, or suggestions for any conflicts which are likely to need sublists and are not already mentioned. Mjroots (talk) 17:01, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

• It could be a very large list! do you need to define combat a bit better (like shot down, collided/rammed, hit by ground fire) rather than just on an operational mission or do you consider all "wartime" losses as "lost in combat"? MilborneOne (talk) 17:35, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

@MilborneOne:, my thoughts are that an aircraft lost whilst on a combat mission from whatever cause would qualify for an entry - including, but not limited to:- a crash on take-off, mid-air collision, friendly fire, enemy fire, crash on landing after combat mission, or damage which renders an aircraft unfit for further use following a combat mission.

Aircraft lost whilst being transported on ships may be a bit trickier to define. Obviously those lost when an aircraft carrier is lost due to enemy action would qualify, as would those expended during CAM ship operations. I'd say that aircraft lost in transport on merchant ships sunk by enemy action would be outside the scope of the lists.

It won't be a very large list, as I envisage a good number of sublists. For WWI and WWII, I envisage an initial sub-listing by year, then splitting into months as the lists expand, in a similar format to the List of shipwrecks in 1940.

"Wartime" would include war-like situations such as insurgencies, and civil wars, whether or not a formal state of war had been declared. The eligibility of any single period would be open to discussion. Mjroots (talk) 17:51, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

OK User:Mjroots I dont have a problem with your definition, probably get some other situations come up but they can be discussed. MilborneOne (talk) 17:57, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, always open to discussion. Let's get this side of things thrashed out before we start creating the lists. Mjroots (talk) 18:04, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Comments copied from WT:MILHIST.

I think that you're grossly underestimating the scale of the task you've set yourself unless they're confined to operations other than war like Chechneya, Ukraine, etc. Wartime losses in combat total somewhere in the neighborhood of 100,000 aircraft with the exact cause of loss unknown for many aircraft. I suppose that a loose definition of lost during an operational sortie/shot down by an enemy aircraft could be used to separate out training losses, but still...--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 17:23, 16 June 2014 (UTC)#

@Sturmvogel 66: - training losses would be outside the scope of these lists. See above comments about how it is proposed to deal with the large number of losses. Obviously, any entry would need to be referenced to a reliable source or it would be liable to summary deletion. Mjroots (talk) 18:48, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I would tend to agree. You'd also have to determine what's going to count as a combat loss, which isn't always an easy thing to sort through (I'm thinking here of US helicopter losses in Vietnam, and you may see the same thing with the Soviets in Afghanistan). Intothatdarkness 17:38, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

@Intothatdarkness: See above comments for definition of "combat loss". Mjroots (talk) 18:48, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

If you include helicopters, you'll need to deal with aircraft that might technically be "shot down" (in other words sustain damage that renders them incapable of flight) but are recovered and put back into service very quickly (within hours in some cases). In that case, does it count as a combat loss, even though the aircraft wasn't destroyed and actually returned to service? Intothatdarkness 19:04, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

In that case, I'd say no, but an aircraft forced down and subsequently interred or salvaged by enemy forces would count if the event occurred during a compat mission. Mjroots (talk) 19:21, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Ah...but it gets more complex. In some cases a helicopter might be reported as "shot down" (and thus go into the total losses for an operation) only to be salvaged and repaired later. The figures often were not adjusted to account for this. Intothatdarkness 20:29, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I'd agree, & add another wrinkle: how do you count (frex) the helos counted "lost" by the U.S. Army in 'nam that were salvaged & put back in service...? TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 17:51, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

@Trekphiler: Claimed combat losses later salvaged would be handled in exactly the same way as those ships sunk and later salvaged. Mjroots (talk) 18:48, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Copied from WT:AV -

Good luck - you might want to look at List of most produced aircraft to give you an idea of the scale - a significant number of the several hundreds of thousands of aircraft built just during WW2 were shot down, and records are not always either accurate, or still in existence. Since the end of WW2, it gets a lot easier but the records are still incomplete. Kill claims are notoriously inaccurate - both the Flying Tigers in China, and the USAF in Korea claimed to have shot down more opposing fighters than had EVER been in their theatres of operations during the entire time they were operational - you'll need to go to the horses mouth and get records for each combatant, on what aircraft they recorded as having lost. In addition, records are not always made on the day of the actual loss, and a significant proportion of those records have not been published as useable secondary references.NiD.29 (talk) 05:30, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

@NiD.29: - yes, it is a huge task, but it can be done by breaking it down into managable chunks.

You raise some good points. I appreciate that claims during combat do not equate to the actual number of losses. I seem to recall that claims are something like 4 or 5 for every actual loss. What I envisage is verified losses, backed up by (mostly) written sources. If a particular loss is not verifiable to Wikipedia standards, then it doesn't get in. The various lists of shipwrecks covering WWI and WWII are in the same situation. They don't claim to cover every ship lost during the period concerned, and can't hope to. What they can, and do, do is cover verifiable losses. Mjroots (talk) 19:47, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

The number of ships is a tiny fraction of the number of aircraft, and ships, due to their massive cost, and insurance, and frequent international travel are tracked by their owners and customs and port authorities and tax officials and insurance companies and are far more likely to be well documented, and even then there are discrepancies.

In contrast, take the Chinese Civil wars for example - a great many aircraft are known to have arrived in China from the 1920s until the late 1940s, however their entire operational history in China, including their destruction is completely unknown. This is for a conflict for which more aircraft were involved that all of the wars following the Korean War, combined. While a stable country with a functioning bureaucracy will document such things, when civil wars occur, providing a paper trail for historians is the last thing on anyone's mind, and any paperwork that does exist is as likely to be destroyed as not. Such aircraft are likely to have only three pieces of information - covering it being ordered, it being built and it being exported, so we know it existed, but nothing more. I could list dozens upon dozens of aircraft for which we will never know even how many were built, or delivered. Then there is the problem that much of the possible information won't be in English, or available. The result will be a disproportionate degree of coverage for recent conflicts, and those involving the US, the UK and Germany.NiD.29 (talk) 14:45, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

@NiD.29: We need to accept that such a list will never be complete, as with the ships. If the loss of as particular aircraft cannot be verified, then it is not a problem; we don't list it. Yes, coverage in some aresa will be better than others, but this is a problem that covers all topics worldwide and is something that we have to live with. Mjroots (talk) 20:34, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

What is a combat mission?

Another issue we'll need to define is what a "combat mission" is. I'd say that it would include spotting/reconnaisance, escort duties, infantry & artillery support, bombing missions, special operations, dogfights. Aircraft expended during battles (e.g. CAM ship operations, gliders during Operation Overlord, Operation Market Garden etc). Aircraft lost on warships / CAM ships sunk due to enemy action would qualify. Excluded would be training (including training for specific combat operations, navexes, transport operations etc unless the loss was directly due to enemy action. Similarly, aircraft lost during the Berlin Airlift would be outside the scope of this. They are probably best dealt with as a section of that article. Mjroots (talk) 19:31, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

This will also become complex when you hit helicopters in Vietnam (and possibly the Soviet campaign in Afghanistan depending on what sources are available). Helicopter resupply missions were quite common, and might not always track correctly in the records (especially if the unit conducting the mission was from a different organization). Intothatdarkness 14:16, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

page splits

For the between the wars era - there were a number of major conflicts that involved significant numbers of aircraft, including the Chinese Civil War and Second Sino-Japanese War, the Spanish Civil War, several South American Wars, including the Chaco War. These should probably be split apart. For WW2, it might be more manageable, and useful by theater (Pacific/Asia/Southern Europe/Western Europe/Africa/Eastern Front), then by month since losses can then be more meaningfully compared. Similarly with the post war era, it might be better to break them into specific conflicts, as otherwise the numbers of losses (if the list ever achieves that degree of completion) are otherwise pretty meaningless. Of course this can wait until the actual number of entries is larger.NiD.29 (talk) 07:07, 18 June 2014 (UTC)