[MW Giles]

For someone to be a liar they either have to know what the truth is and say something completely different or not know what the truth is but knowingly make something up to fill the gap. Either way they are knowing being false, lying, though if you repeat a lie often enough your mind can come to believe it is true. Please do not label people as liars unless you have proof.

If I and twenty of my comrads get around the escorts and attack a box of B-17s head on, I get one squarely in my sights and let fly with everything I have before split-S-ing away seconds later. I see strikes (could be mine, could be someone else behind me). When I pull out and having cleared my tail I look out and see two B-17s going down through the cloud below and one in formation billowing black smoke. More may have gone down, but I can definitely see two. Me and four others have a similar experience. When we land we are all going to make a claim aren't we? No one is lying, no one is exagerating, we are reporting what we saw and experienced. The officials look at the evidence and cannot decide between us, they find wreckage on the ground. Multiply that up to the hundreds of a/c and encounters of WW2 and you can see why the system is not perfect

65 years later someone looks at the encounter and says JG999 made an attack and claimed 5 B-17s, actually the USAAF only lost 1 and had another two badly damaged. Those guys must be liars.

You cannot and must not say that

There are so may factors that come into play that in the end claims have to be treated as just that - claims. The hotter and more confusing an encounter, the larger the number of a/c involved, the less experienced the pilots, the higher the number of claims there will be (on average) and the greater the potential disparity between claims and verified losses

It is worthwhile reaearching the encounter and it is worthwhile looking at the different air forces and their criteria for assessing and awarding claims, however it is not worthwhile or achieveable to list all pilots in order of how reliable you think their scoring is and label them liars if they fall below some arbitrary point on the scale.

Martin