Did Luft Victory Verification become stricter during WWII?

[Rob Romero]

To quote a previous poster:

“I think that later (1941-42? Not my domain.) German claims and RLM-confirmations became much more accurate, possibly because Göring et al realized what was going on, needed accurate statistics on enemy losses and didn't want EVERY single fighter pilot to walk around with the Knight's Cross around his neck (hence, too, the creation of the “Deutsches Kreuz”, a KC “brake”), and certainly were angered by wrong claims.”

1) Does anyone know when the Abschusskommission (Victory board) was established to verify Luftwaffe victory claims?
2) Were these modified or made more thorough after the initial campaigns of the Europoean War?

Thanx

Rob Romero

[rdunn]

I'm not sure its a matter of sooner or later but of theater and circumstances. The RAF obtained a document with 12th FK claims for a period of several months during 42 and 43 and after detailed research was able to determine that they were virtually 100% accurate. These were night fighter claims under contolled interceptions and mainly over German occupied territory. The meticulous Gen Kammhuber was the commander. Under these circumstances claims were very accurate.

Over the African Desert (as documented in Shores 'Fighters Over the Desert' and other sources) claims by Marseille and other top aces were reasonably accurate but far from perfect. In the same theater there were charaltans that made totally bogus claims.

No amount of process can guarantee an accurate result! I think other factors were probably more important than how many levels of review and how much process was applied.

[Jens]

Seems not so for German Luftwaffe. From July 1943 it was possible to claim without eyewitnesses.

[Charles Bavarois]

Jens,

you wrote
>>" seems not so for the German Luftwaffe. From July 1943 it was possible
to claim without eyewitnesses<<.

This is quite surprising to me, especially because at nearly the same time the "Abschusskommissionen" were introduced for Reichsverteidigung. Could you please tell us your source for this statement ?
:wink:

Carl

[Jens]

Lipferts Biographie and JG-51 Chronicle. Since the Battle of Kursk (July 1943) this order was given. Also Hartmann described getting kills flying alone. If you had claimed a kill wihtout eyewitnesses this was counted, but had to be prooved after the war.

Maybe this order was only given to eastern front units? not to "Reichsverteidigung".

[Christer Bergström]

"Lipferts Biographie and JG-51 Chronicle."

In which chapters, please?

"Since the Battle of Kursk (July 1943) this order was given."

Source, please?

"Also Hartmann described getting kills flying alone."

Source, please?


"If you had claimed a kill wihtout eyewitnesses this was counted, but had to be prooved after the war."

Source, please?


All best,

Christer Bergström

[Jens]

Out from "JG-51 Chronik" by Aders/Held (Motorbuchverlag):
Sorry too less time for translating:
Page 55: " Anerkennung eines Abschusses ohne Zeugen gab es, soweit bekannt, erst ab Sommer 1943 (Schlacht um Kursk), allerdings erst mit dem Vorbehalt " einer endgültigen Nachprüfung nach Kriegsende"."

Lipfert i don't find , sorry i am searching, but i remember situation he described. He describes in his book, he had to escort german bombers. He gets in dogfights with russian fighters and following one of these. He shoot down the russian fighter and "hätte den Abschuß ohne Zeugen anerkennen lassen müßen"(had to get confirming without witnesses), if not his chief Barkhorn had seen it and made the witness. In the same time Barhorn was a little bit angry with Lipfert cause he left formation and bombers for a kill.

Hartmann Tolliver/Constable: Page 100 described how Hartmann made kills and tells no one, cause he researched an enemy airfield. This is also happend at 2.10.43 were Hartmann killed one Lagg-3 and one Pe-2. Rall could only confirm the kills, coming too late. These were also stated as Hartmanns kills No. 118 and 119 (LaGG-5 and Pe-2) at Page 337.

Rall however challenges this perspective (page 181 Rall "Mein Flugbuch") he described Hartmann get no kills in this sortie. Also he described that he did the kills, his 201. and 202. ( 2 times La-5 according to Ralls Flugbuch). In an annotation he tells explicit that Hartmanns book (Tolliver/Constable) is not right.

Interesting what claim films show:
02.10.43 Ltn. Erich Hartmann 9./JG 52 LaGG  58 833 at 5.000 m. 08.40 Film C. 2035/I Anerk: Nr. 1217
02.10.43 Ltn. Erich Hartmann 9./JG 52 Pe-2  58 762 at 6.500 m. 08.50 Film C. 2035/I Anerk: Nr. 1218

It also shows no kills for Rall. According to both, this was the only sortie they flied together. Hartmann tell morning hours of the day, Rall means that they flew in the afternoon.

One of the both didn't tell the true, seems that one of them has "only" 350 or 273 kills.

[Ota Jirovec]

Perhaps the statement in Aders/Held book is a confusion with the fact that claims were sometimes confirmed by German radio service that had monitored the Soviet R/T - one such case is described e.g. in Peter Düttmann´s memoirs "Wir kämpften in einsamen Höhen" (p. 83) - Düttmann´s fourth Abschuss, a VVS Boston, was shot down without any witness in the air and the victor himself (hit by the return fire of the Russian bomber) had to ditch off Anapa. Only later came the confirmation from the radio monitoring service. I believe that this was not quite uncommon.

The above incident has occurred on 11.7.1943 and Düttmann was a pilot of 5./JG 52 then.

Hope this helps a little,

Ota

[Csaba B. Stenge]

I have found some claims also among the Abschussmeldungen without air or ground witnesses, which were later confirmed. I'll check my notes.

[Jens]

Interesting that this order seems to be given in July 1943. Maybe a reason for overlclaiming by the Luftwaffe at Kursk.
Soviets lost 232 planes in aircombat/178 by AAA and overall 600 in July 1943. 8. Airkorps claimes 692 airkills, most seem to be confirmed.

[JoeB]

RDUNN: "I'm not sure its a matter of sooner or later but of theater and circumstances. The RAF obtained a document with 12th FK claims for a period of several months during 42 and 43 and after detailed research was able to determine that they were virtually 100% accurate.

Over the African Desert (as documented in Shores 'Fighters Over the Desert' and other sources) claims by Marseille and other top aces were reasonably accurate but far from perfect. In the same theater there were charaltans that made totally bogus claims. "

Perhaps the discussion could branch into two: 1) how strict were nominal claim verification procedures? and 2) how accurate were claims, actually? The two would be related obviously but much less than 1:1 correlation.

I don't know much about the progression of nominal LW claims procedures, but as you say many modern works on LW seem to show fairly widely varying actual claim accuracy. Another data point would be claims by Me-262's against USAAF props as given in Foreman "Me-262 Combat Diary". My amateurish and rough comparison of these to published sources of US losses makes them seem quite exaggerated, a small % are directly verifiable and though a larger number are possible in the "boundary condition" sense that more US fighters were lost that day than claimed by 262's alone, given all other possible combat and other causes, and the losses not being id'ed as losses to jets, it seems unlikely a large % of such losses were really to jets. Perhaps those who've researched this on a primary level would comment?

To take an example of another war and air arm, Soviet verification of claims in Korea was nominally quite tight: fellow pilots, allied ground witnesses and gc film were often all provided, plus later in the war wreck surveys by the Soviets themselves. Yet still the great majority of the claims can't be found as losses in US primary records, at all. A secondary debate can be had of causes given in US primary records (as I understand is the case with MACR's in WWII, later records have a different format(s)) but this is a debate over already a much smaller universe of losses than those claimed and not a lot of those cause attributions seem really that likely to be wrong, looking the other way in terms of burden of proof only a small handful can be shown to be wrong.

Btw to site owners this is a terrific improvement in the software, thanks very much. I bet it will increase the success of this forum which has always had remarkably learned posts but not so great format of software :D

Joe