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According to the “Illustrated Encyclopedia of Military Aircraft”, the totals for aircraft production during WWI are as follows.
France: 67,987
Great Britain: 58,144
Germany: 48,537
Italy: 20,000
USA: 15,000
Austria-Hungary: 5,431
Russia: 4,700
Of these, France lost 52,640, Great Britain lost 35,973, and Germany lost 27,637. Loss numbers for the other countries were not available in the quoted source.
Do I win, do I win? And if so, what?
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The point is what means "lost" ?
Is this combat losses ?
Is this written off losses ?
Because about France, starting from late 1917, when production became "plentifull", the criteria for writing off a plane were very "relaxed".
Actually, a plane was written off whenever a "better" replacement was available.
Remember that depots were only few hours away from the front in average : If it takes one night to repair a plane, it takes 2 hours max to get a new one, so the choice was easy !
For instance, in late 1917, Sop107 pilots were told that all damaged Sopwith planes would be replaced by brand new nice Breguet 14. Most pll pilots knew how to safely break the landing gear upon landing by applying full rudder on touch down.
One week later, all pilots had their Breguet
Indeed, the same thing happened during operation Bodenplatte in 1945: The number of "destroyed" allied planes seemed very impressive at first, but on a closer look, a lot of them could have been repaired , but getting a new one was easier.