[Don Caldwell]

Hello all --

IMHO Juha's post is "spot on", and his last paragraph summarizes my position perfectly -- claim accuracy is of historical significance, but attempts to determine the motivation of the claimants at this late date are pointless, trending toward insulting. In my belief that more data are always good, I've included enough in my new book (now at the publisher) to allow theater-wide estimates of the accuracy of the claims of the RLV day fighter force versus US 8th and 15th AAF fighters and bombers and also the accuracy of USAAF fighter claims vs the RLV day fighters. Here are my paragraphs introducing the subject:

"Special mention of victory claims will be made here. It is the author’s contention that while ‘losses’ are real – broken hardware on the ground – ‘claims’ are only notional – by definition, a matter of opinion. The proper metrics for evaluating combat performance in a given air campaign are thus the two sides’ losses, not their victory claims. Yet, during the war, victory claims had legitimate uses beyond mere propaganda. Victory claims were a widely used measure of a unit’s effectiveness. Given the chance to score, the best fighter units had the most victory claims. Skilful upper-level commanders knew this and gave their better units greater opportunities by assigning them the most critical tasks. Ironically, these superior units had a higher percentage of invalid claims than lesser units, but that’s the nature of the fighter pilot: the best ones were highly aggressive and self-confident, leading to victory claims that later evaluation could not substantiate.

"Post-war interest in victory claims and their accuracy remains high. Other researchers have compared the claims of individual pilots with enemy losses to calculate an ‘overclaim rate’ for those pilots. Similar estimates have been made for some combat units (Allied fighter groups and German Jagdgruppen). It would be of interest to extend such estimates to entire air forces and campaigns. Tables B–E contain sufficient data to permit claim accuracy ratios to be estimated for the RLV force versus 8th and 15th Air Force bombers and fighters (separately) as well as for both the 8th and 15th Air Force versus the RLV force. Figures for losses specifically to enemy aircraft were required for the calculations; these had to be distinguished from other causes. Details of how these figures were obtained are found in the discussion for Table C. Losses of 8th Air Force fighters after D-Day could not be split between strategic and tactical missions, and the RLV claim accuracy ratio versus fighters was not calculated past May 1944. Summarising the Table B results, the overclaim ratio versus bombers was 1.39; versus fighters, 0.97. Claims versus fighters were thus ‘perfect’, proving that the Luftwaffe confirmation process worked well when the number of claims was relatively small and crashes could be found and counted."

Note that the numbers in this quote cover only the RLV force versus the 8th AF -- for the rest you have to see the book. I hope this whets the appetites of some of you. Day Fighters in Defence of the Reich should be out in a few months (I have no better luck at predicting exact dates than Jochen.)

Horrido!

Don