Largest Single Fighter Airbattle of WWII

During an intresting accounting of the Dieppe Raid an little known fact was brought up: When the Raid began to collapse in on itself as a disaster the Royal Airforce battled the German Airforce to allow the navy to evacuate what troops they could from the three beach landings. Apparently the air battle was the largest sigle fighter airbattle of the war, and I stress the point of FIGHTER planes.

With this said it would be interesting the stats on how many aircraft took part, and how many on both sides were lost.

The Mutant Poodle

 

I have found this nice bit of work, without doubt the battle over Dieppe was much bigger than I even believed.

http://www.luftwaffe.cz/dieppe.html

 

I don't know the exact numbers but I would think the fighter battles over KURSK during the german offensive ( operation citadal ??) would have involved much larger number of aircraft.

 

But Kursk (Citadel (Eng) or Zitadelle (De) IIRC) was not a fighter battle, large numbers of bombers and dedicated ground-attackers were also involved.

 

Poodle:
The RAF lost 107 aircraft in that melee. It was NOT a good day for them...
I have no information on the total number of aircraft that were in action over Dieppe. (British or German.)

Tim

 

battle of kursk did have huge numbers of ground attck aircraft, but they also had huge numbers of fighters to protect or intercept said ground attack aircraft. anyone know the numbers.

RAF lost 107 at dieppe, the damage will be more so, because any pilot who bail out will be a pow, ( germans had the same problem in B britain)

 

In terms of fighter losses(for the Japanese) I think that the battle of the Phillipine Sea would be greater than British losses at Dieppe.

 

I believe (And there's no way now of getting confirmation of this as Mutant Poodle is now a "Former Member"), that what he was getting at was purely fighter vs fighter battles.

Kursk, for example, involved fighters, true, but it also involved many ground attack and bombing types, so was not purely a fighter battle.

The Phillipine Sea (Great Mariannas Turkey Shoot) similarly involved fighters, but also many (If not most) of the Japanese losses were Dive-bombers, torpedo bombers and land based aircraft, so again was not a pure Fighter vs Fighter battle.

I would imagine that some of the air battles over the Desert may come close, but to be honest I have no details on any of them.

 

Well even taking into account that the numbers of losses were majority bombers I think that the fighters lost (out of a total of 600 or so downed aircraft) would exceed the ~100 lost British fighters at Dieppe. The air battles were truly enormous by any reckoning though they were certainly more one sided than any in the European theatre.

 

im gonna go way out on a limb here and wager that german losses were a third of raf losses...home feild advantage and all....how can we find out ...anyone?

 

Air losses at Dieppe:

RAF: 2050 Spitfire sorties, 59 lost.
Total RAF battle losses were 106 aircraft, with an additional 14 lost to battle damage. 67 pilots killed.

Luftwaffe: 48 aircraft lost (including on the ground) and 24 damaged. Personnel losses, including ground crew, 104 dead and 54 wounded.

The RAF claimed 91 victories and 44 probables.

 

Typical WW2 overclaim. Dieppe was definitely not the RAF's best day, capping the trend of heavy losses (for no gain) the RAF sustained in the fighter sweeps over France after the end of the Battle of Britain.

 

of 48 german planes lost ,can we determine how many were arial kills?fighters vs bombers lost?

 

I don't have any breakdown on the German losses.

 

so really who won the air victory at Dieppe

 

Define 'won'

RAF lost more planes, but the Luftwaffe did not seriously interfere with the landings etc. So I guess the RAF achieved its aim better than the Luftwaffe did.

 

I did a project about Deippe last year for history. My notes have this number of aircraft losses:

Allied: 119
Axis: 46

Out of roughly 70 squadron of fighters (48 Squadrons of Spits)
Against 200 fighters, (mostly new FW-190's) and about 100 bombers (mostly Dornier 217's)

Not only was it a failure on the ground and in the sea......stupid S-Boat tipping off the Germans.

This was in the main assult:
Threescore Germans killed 225 men were killed, 264 surrendered.
33 made it back to England

Germans never felt the need to call for backup

 

so how many germans were killed on the ground :kill:

 

Dunno. BRB

I don't think I have the German casualties.

edit- nope don't have 'em

 

the brits tipped their hand?...s boat ,loose lips...what happined?why were the germans ready?