The Frontbestand data is a record the Germans kept of which aircraft were at the front lines, with records for every two months from the start of the war until August 1918. (Unfortunately the October 1918 records were lost or never completed, which is too bad.) The first place I saw them published was an article by Peter M. Grosz in WW1 Aero, № 107, Dec 1985 and № 108, Feb 1986. There are some errors...planes that show a number before they were ever tested, but hopefully those are minimal. There are some planes that were only kept around as Jasta taxis ("hacks") long after their fighting days were over. They don't include Naval aircraft. But in general they are a superb record of German aircraft use during WWI.
Long ago I published some charts that showed the numbers as percentages, e.g. of all the fighters in use in a certain month, what percentage was one vs. the other, but these charts show them as raw counts. Let's start with fighters: D, Dr, and E-class aircraft:
Here's where I wish we had the October 1918 data -- it would be interesting to see how those numbers changed in the last few months of the war.
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