You do understand that this release of German pilots is what happened historically, right? From the tone of your response I'm guessing that would be a 'no.'
I have no figures on the breakdown between fighter pilots and bomber pilots, but we could probably roughly figure out a proportion based on the number of the two types shot down. I suspect that less than half of them would be fighter pilots, but that's purely a guess. As to whether the 400 were just pilots or pilots and flight crew, my recollection of the source is that they said pilots, which would imply that they meant pilots. Of course (a) I could be misremembering, or (b) someone along the chain could have lumped flight crew together with pilots and called them all pilots. If you find some other figure and a reason why it's more accurate I would not be adamant in my defense of this one. I do remember that Churchill was quite upset that these guys were turned over to the Germans, which tends to indicate that he thought it was significant.
I have no figures on the breakdown between fighter pilots and bomber pilots, but we could probably roughly figure out a proportion based on the number of the two types shot down. I suspect that less than half of them would be fighter pilots, but that's purely a guess. As to whether the 400 were just pilots or pilots and flight crew, my recollection of the source is that they said pilots, which would imply that they meant pilots. Of course (a) I could be misremembering, or (b) someone along the chain could have lumped flight crew together with pilots and called them all pilots. If you find some other figure and a reason why it's more accurate I would not be adamant in my defense of this one. I do remember that Churchill was quite upset that these guys were turned over to the Germans, which tends to indicate that he thought it was significant.
Is it? Very significant, I mean.
The question is: pilots of what?
You posted this and quoted the data I provided, but those data dealt exclusively with single-engine fighter pilots. Are these 400 pilots returned to Germany all Bf 109 pilots? Are they all fighter pilots? Are they Luftwaffe pilots, be it of fighters or of bombers? Or are they simply Luftwaffe aircrew, including tail gunners?
I strongly suspect they aren't all Bf 109 pilots, and I wouldn't be surprised if they are all types of downed Luftwaffe aircrew personnel.