Permanent Losses

If you are a frequent reader of my blog, you ought to know that the German army and the Red Army counted their losses differently. Whereas the German army considered a vehicle lost when it is both destroyed and irrecoverable, the Red Army considered a vehicle lost even if it was repairable, including vehicles that got stuck in mud, fell off a bridge, etc. A question naturally arises: how do you compare the two numbers? The short answer is "you can't", but the long answer is "let's estimate the ratio of temporary to permanent losses". Here is a table from the 1st Belorussian Front report (CAMD RF 233-2309-165), giving us the ability to do just that.

"Combat losses during past operations

Operation	Month and year	% lost in combat	% permanent losses
Orel-Kursk	July 1943	42	11.6
	August 1943	61	17.7
Sevsk	September 1943	40.5	11.4
Gomel-Rechitsy	November 1943	54	14
Mozyr	December 1943	37.2	13.7
Rogachev	January 1944	19.5	-
	February 1944	32	-
Summer	1st period
	July1944	17	23
	June 1944	16.3	9.7
	August 1944	13.6	7.1
	2nd period (Narva)
	September 1944	22	6.5
	October 1944	21.2	7.4

The mean of the permanent losses is a mere 12.2%. When comparing Soviet losses to German losses, the reduction is nearly by an order of magnitude! 

Additionally, let's take a look at what contributed to those permanent losses.

"Combat damage to tanks in the Orel-Kursk operation

• Participated in battle: 7942
• Lost: 2971 (37.4%)
• Artillery fire: 1393 (47%)
• Fire: 949 (32%)
• Mines: 209 (7%)
• Aircraft fire: 187 (6.3%)
• Technical breakdowns: 127 (4.3%)
• Drowned: 29 (1%)
• Abandoned on the battlefield: 55 (1.8%)"

Even in what is known as the world's largest tank battle, losses from things other than tanks are very significant, driving yet another nail into the coffin of comparing tank losses as some kind of measure of performance.