Men are the most important component of a military unit, but weapons, especially certain weapon systems like tanks and aircraft, can have enormous influence on the kind of battle being waged. For the first time, the Soviets have released statistics on their own overall losses in certain equipment types, from the military archives.

Soviet Equipment Losses by Year
Type	1941	1942	1943	1944
Tanks	20,500	15,100	23,500	23,700
Artillery	101,100	107,600	38,600	51,800
Aircraft	10,300	7,800	11,200	9,700

Note: Tanks includes self-propelled guns, artillery includes mortars of all sizes, and aircraft includes only combat losses of military aircraft, not transports or training aircraft, and does not include losses due to accidents.

Discussion

The losses of tanks in 1941 included 90% of the prewar tank park, by Soviet calculations. 16,500 of the tanks lost were lost to breakdowns or "abandoned by their crews," not to direct enemy action. This reflects the very fragile nature of tanks: without trained and equipped maintenance support, and in a long-distance move even with it, non-combat losses will frequently exceed combat losses.

The high tank losses 1942-44 reflect two things: first, that tanks are offensive weapons and tend to get used up in offensives, and second, that the Soviets had a lot more tanks in action as the war went on. Take a look at the losses as a percentage of tanks in service:

Year	Avg. Available	Lost	Percentage
1942	4600	15,100	328%
1943	7800	23,500	301%
1944	9050	23,700	262%

This is actually a fairly steady ratio over three years of warfare. More to the point, by May 1945 the Soviet Army had a total of 35,200 tanks and SP Artillery on hand, while keeping no more than 14,000 tanks and SP guns in units. They had learned what the US Army already knew: to keep 100 tanks constantly in action, have another 200 tanks in depots ready to replace them! It is not so much the raw numbers of tanks that you have available, but how many of them are truly operational at any given point in time.

German and Soviet tank losses could be compared, but the comparison doesn't say much, because most tank losses are not caused by the enemy tanks. After all, the largest monthly tank losses suffered by Gernian armor for the first half of the war (including Stalingrad and the 1942 summer offensive) occurred in July and August 1941, when the Soviet tank park was largely abandoned by the side of the road. The 1348 German armored vehicles permanently destroyed in those two months were largely destroyed by Soviet guns: 45mm, 76.2mm, and 85mm antitank, divisional, and antiaircraft pieces, and regular artillery firing direct fire. What happens when your regular artillery does that, and when it gets caught in large encirclements, is graphically shown in the figures for Soviet guns and mortars lost in 1941 and 1942: 208,700 total, or 65.7% of the total wartime losses of these weapons. The combined loss in the 1943-44 campaigns was less than the number of guns lost in six Months in 1941.

Aircraft losses as a percentaoe of the avera(le number in service (with front-line units):

Year	Avg. Available	Lost	Percentage
1942	2800	7800	279%
1943	7200	11,200	156%
1944	14,500	9,700	67%

Discussion

It would be very interesting to compare aircraft losses between German and Soviet forces, since, largely, aircraft fight eaoh other and so the figures should have a direct relation to the effectiveness of each air force. This might also help to determine if the changes from year to year were caused by more proficient Soviet aircraft and pilots or decreasing German proficiency, or simple superiority of numbers.

I suspect a combination of factors is responsible, as happened in the West in 1943-44. Unfortunately, the figures are not precise enough to allow direct comparison of German and Soviet losses. The Soviets claim a total of 43,100 "combat losses" of aircraft during the war, but in another work admit to losing 88,300 aircraft. Studying statistics from other air forces, like the British and the German, I suspect that the 88,300 is the total of aircraft lost to all causes, including non-combat accidents, damage, etc.

The total of Soviet combat aircraft losses for 1941 (10,300) looks so low that I suspect that the Soviets did not count aircraft lost on the ground to enemy ground forces or air attack. As with the tanks, however, by 9 May 1945 the Soviets had 47,300 combat aircraft on hand of which about 18,000 were in units. Tank and aircraft losses tend to be attritional, and more often than not, the side with the reserves to keep the front-line units up to strength controls the battlefield.

Bloodbath: Casualties on the WWII Eastern Front

Introduction and War Totals
Barbarossa 1941 and Soviet Winter Offensive 1941-42
German Summer Offensive 1942 and Soviet Winter Offensive 1942-43
Soviet Summer Offensive 1943 and 1944 Offensives
Equipment, Tank, Aircraft Losses 1941-44
Conclusions