The air battle over Cape Breton Island on November 30 did not draw to a close until the sun had set. The participating Royal Air Force, the US Army Air Corps' 1st Air Force and 2nd Air Force, as well as the German Air Force and the German Navy's Carrier-based Aircraft Unit, had all suffered grievous losses and been worn to exhaustion.
Almost every pilot who survived had taken part in two, or even three or more, sorties. This showed just how vast the scale of the air battle had been, and how savage the fighting.
Naturally, an enormous number of aircraft had also been lost in this battle. After this engagement, the Royal Air Force was almost a name existing in name only. They had lost more than five hundred fighters over the course of the day. The entire Royal Air Force now had fewer than two hundred fighters remaining.
The US Army Air Corps' 1st Air Force and 2nd Air Force, which had entered the battle later, had likewise suffered devastating losses. The fighter forces of the two Air Forces combined had numbered more than seven hundred aircraft. Yet after this battle, fewer than one hundred fighters capable of continuing combat remained.
Likewise, the German Air Force and the German Navy's Carrier-based Aircraft Unit had lost more than two hundred fighters in this battle. Compared with the Royal Air Force and the US Army Air Corps, those losses might have been far lower. But one must not forget that the German Air Force and Navy had not possessed many fighters around Newfoundland and its surrounding waters to begin with.
The US Army Air Corps could continuously dispatch aircraft from across the country northward as reinforcements, while the German Air Force and Navy were constrained by the number of