Quote:
Originally Posted by Mirek Wawrzynski
To Juha and Joe
I have a "big problem" with classification of victory (several times it was earlier discused). Giving only total loss,Of course JAAF had lost total almost 6 times less fighters (but similar number was damaged too: 96 Ki-27 total lost plus 124 damaged, returned into units, all 220; plus next 5 Ki-10).
BTW
Soviet and JAAF losses accoridng the last V. Kondratiev book "Bitva nad stepju", Moskwa 2008.
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Mirek, I do see your point. But I also see practical problems with evaluating claim accuracy or kill ratio's by using damaged planes as victories for the other side.
It is often difficult enough to define and count 'destroyed' a/c (what '% damage' in the German system? do 'forced landings' at home base count, or 'crash landings', or how about if it's in a field somewhere). This gets more complicated still for damage. For example, Japanese Navy operational reports usually give damage in detail down to number of holes in the plane (does 1 hole in a Zero confirm the claim of an opposing Allied pilot to have shot down a Zero?).
And accurate info about losses is often hard to find, damage much more difficult, especially for both sides. For example, it's taken decades to know 'real' Communist MiG-15 losses in Korea to F-86's in any detail, in sources open to Westerners. Soviet claims of F-86's were also at a high ratio to actual outright losses of F-86's, (absolute numbers and ratio was actually both fairly similar to Nomonhan, coincidentally). But it's also taken a long time to find comprehensive data on damaged F-86's (I think I have most of it, but a few random month's folder's were just lost it seems). And if we add those to Soviet 'victories' (the numbers are again coincidentally similar to Type 97's at Nomonhan), we still don't have the same info on Soviet, let alone Chinese or NK, *damaged* MiG's.
And, air arms which tried more seriously to keep their claims in line with reality often credited their pilots with 'probable' and 'damaged'. Again using Korea example, if we could find comprehensive data on MiG-15 damage in Korea, the US overclaim rate, just counting 'destroyed' credits, would surely drop below 1, underlcaim...because many 100's of MiG's were only credited as 'damaged' (and the several 100 actually destroyed for all three MiG AF's were ~75%, perhaps, of what US credited as 'destroyed'). This would be a strange result. OTOH if we didn't count damaged MiG's as 'victories' because the USAF had only claimed them damaged, but did count damaged F-86's as verifying Soviet claims of F-86's destroyed (they didn't officially credit 'damaged'), that doesn't seem very evenhanded. AFAIK, Allies AF's in WWII often also kept track of 'damage' and 'probable' credits, but not always or uniformly.
But more info is always better, and I'm very interested in the book you mentioned about Japanese losses in 1939. Did Kondratiev give his original Japanese source for those numbers?
In summary, I absolutely agree that information about damaged a/c further *clarifies* the results of air combat. It gives a solid explanation why a pilot might have believed he'd destroyed an opposing plane: he had indeed hit it. But I don't know about a practice of counting damaged a/c in scores which were supposed to have represented destroyed a/c.
Joe