Losses and the Luftwaffe after the Battle of Britain In the Aftermath section it is noted In losses of aircraft and experienced aircrew the battle was a blow from which the Luftwaffe never fully recovered It had significantly fewer bombers at the start of Operation Barbarossa some 929 machines because of losses sustained over Britain Bergstr m 2007 p 129 I am not sure if that is what Bergstr m who is being referenced here actually writes as I do not have access to his books I doubt it however The Luftwaffe frontline strenght certainly did not decrease as a result of the Battle of Britain as reinforcements and production was more than sufficient to replace losses and to replace the existing types with more modern type of aircraft withdrawing the older models ie by the start of Barbarossa much of the 109E fleet was now replaced by the new 109F It is also contestable on grounds of Luftwaffe reported strenghts Olaf Groehler in 1975 for example reports the LW frontline strenght not including a lot of aux and non combat oriented units gives the LW strenght as 5298 on 11 April 1940 before the Western Campaigns of which 1356 were S E fighters 1711 being bombers and 414 being dive bombers A day before Barbarossa 21 June 1941 he reports 5599 aircraft ie some 300 aircraft increase including 1440 S E fighters another 263 in a new category the night fighters 1511 bombers and 424 dive bombers Therefore the claim that only 929 bombers were in the Luftwaffe which I suspect is a misunderstanding of the original text is wrong as is the conclusion that this was due to some irreversible blow suffered during the BoB It may well be that 929 or so bombers were employed against Russia while the others elsewhere in the West and in the Med In any case the claim that the BoB was some sort of a death blow to the LW lacks solid foundation It certainly suffered considerable losses as did the RAF which lost apprx 100 of the fighter and bomber force it started the Battle with but even in absolute terms those losses were not irrecoverable the LW already lost about the same number of aircraft during the two months of the Battle of France as it did during the four months of the Battle of Britain yet it was was capable of launching the BoB offensive just a month later as it was capable of seizing complete air dominance over the Eastern front in 1941 Therefore I think that particular sentence is contenstable and should be removed