page_title: Battle of Crete
section_title: Casualties
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Crete / Aftermath / Casualties
context_page_description: The Battle of Crete was fought during the Second World War on the Greek island of Crete. It began on the morning of 20 May 1941, when Nazi Germany began an airborne invasion of Crete. Greek and other Allied forces, along with Cretan civilians, defended the island. After one day of fighting, the Germans had suffered heavy casualties and the Allied troops were confident that they would defeat the invasion. The next day, through communication failures, Allied tactical hesitation and German offensive operations, Maleme Airfield in western Crete fell, enabling the Germans to land reinforcements and overwhelm the defensive positions on the north of the island. Allied forces withdrew to the south coast. More than half were evacuated by the British Royal Navy and the remainder surrendered or joined the Cretan resistance. The defence of Crete evolved into a costly naval engagement; by the end of the campaign the Royal Navy's eastern Mediterranean strength had been reduced to only two battleships and three cruisers.
context_section_description: Official German casualty figures are contradictory due to minor variations in documents produced by German commands on various dates. Davin estimated 6,698 losses, based upon an examination of various sources.  Davin wrote that his estimate might exclude lightly wounded soldiers.
  Reports of German casualties in British reports are in almost all cases exaggerated and are not accepted against the official contemporary German returns, prepared for normal purposes and not for propaganda.
  — Davin
  In 1956, Playfair and the other British official historians, gave figures of 1,990 Germans killed, 2,131 wounded, 1,995 missing, a total of 6,116 men "compiled from what appear to be the most reliable German records".
  Exaggerated reports of German casualties began to appear after the battle had ended. In New Zealand, The Press on 12 June 1941 reported that
  The Germans lost at least 12,000 killed and wounded, and about 5,000 drowned.
  — Taylor
  Churchill claimed that the Germans must have suffered well over 15,000 casualties. Buckley, based on British intelligence assumptions of two enemies wounded for every one killed, gave an estimate of 16,800 casualties. The United States Army Center of Military History, citing a report of the Historical Branch of the British Cabinet Office, concluded that military historians accept estimates from 6,000–7,000 German casualties. The Australian Graves Commission counted about 4,000 German graves in the Maleme–Souda Bay area, and about 1,000 more at Rethymno and Heraklion, that would have included deaths during the German occupation due to sickness, accidents, or fighting with partisan forces.
  The official historians recorded 147 Luftwaffe aircraft destroyed and 64 damaged beyond repair by enemy action, with 73 destroyed due to extensive non-combat damage, for a total of 284 aircraft. Another 84 planes had repairable non-combat damage. In 1987, Shores, Cull, and Malizia recorded losses of 220 aircraft destroyed and 64 written off due to damage, a total of 284 aircraft between 13 May and 1 June: 147 in combat, 73 non-combat, 64 written-off, and 125 damaged but repairable. A total of 311 Luftwaffe aircrew were listed as killed or missing and 127 were wounded. In a 1948 RAF staff publication, Luftwaffe losses were given as about 4,500 parachute and glider troop casualties and about 170 Ju 52s lost or severely damaged; losses in fighter and bomber units were small due to the lack of air opposition.
  The British lost 1,742 killed, 1,737 wounded, and 11,835 taken prisoner from a garrison of slightly more than 32,000 men; and there were 1,828 dead and 183 wounded Royal Navy personnel. Of a force of more than 10,000 men, 5,255 Greek troops were captured. After the war, the Allied graves from the four burial grounds that had been established by the Germans were moved to Souda Bay War Cemetery. A large number of civilians were killed in the crossfire or died fighting as partisans. Many Cretan civilians were shot by the Germans in reprisal during the battle and in the occupation. One Cretan source puts the number of Cretans killed by Germans at 6,593 men, 1,113 women, and 869 children. German records put the number of Cretans executed by firing squad as 3,474 and at least 1,000 civilians were killed in massacres late in 1944.
  The Luftwaffe sank the cruisers HMS Gloucester, HMS Fiji, and HMS Calcutta and the destroyers Kelly, Greyhound and Kashmir from 22 May – 1 June. Italian bombers from 41° Gruppo sank the destroyer HMS Juno on 21 May and on 28 May damaged another destroyer, (HMS Imperial), beyond repair. The British also lost the destroyer HMS Hereward on 29 May, when she was attacked by German Junkers Ju 87 "Stuka" dive-bombers.
  Damage to the aircraft carrier HMS Formidable, the battleships HMS Warspite and HMS Barham, the cruisers HMS Ajax, HMS Dido, HMS Orion, and HMAS Perth, the submarine HMS Rover, the destroyers HMS Kelvin and HMS Nubian, kept them out of action for months. At anchor in Souda Bay, northern Crete, the heavy cruiser HMS York was disabled by Italian explosive motor boats and beached on 26 Ma
caption: A dead German paratrooper May 1941; picture by Propaganda Kompanie 690
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