Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Thompson
Hello Juha,
A case can be made that Soviet claims should be much less acurrate than those of the RAF and USAAF. First of all, gun cameras were very rare in the VVS, even at the end of the war. Second, many Soviet claims were made during large combined-arms operations, where the situation was even more confused than during the Battle of Britain and high overclaiming therefore very likely. Another important factor is the geographical extent of the battlefields, more similar to the Pacific than to Western Europe, which made verification difficult.
|
I agree in that IMHO it seems that in general Soviet claims were more inflated than those of RAF and USAAF but probably not always.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Thompson
The formations may have been smaller on the Eastern Front, but very few of them are as well documented as the ones which flew in the Arctic, you might not quite appreciate this as the beneficiary of so much good Finnish research  |
IMHO the main problem is the scarcity of LW docus and also the scarcity of the VVS' 1941 docus. But otherwise VVS seems to have produced same kind of docus as the Western AFs plus a report on every loss that tried to proof that the operation was within the abilities of the participiants ie that the commander wasn't guilty of ordering his subordinates to participate a mission beyond their ability. BTW have you seen Antipov's and Utkin's Dragons on Bird Wings The Combat History of the 812th Fighter Air Regiment. IMHO very informative and in it there are copies of the main types of the VVS docus on air combats with translations (logbook, service booklet, combat report, eyewitness account, intelligence report, combat loss report, regimental ORB and an application to award a Guard rank to a division. 812 operated in the Southern end of the Eastern Front.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Thompson
However, I think this and much of the above discussion is not particularly significant. Whether or not some pilots overclaimed or not matters little for the course of the air war, as has often been mentioned on this forum. The more interesting and substantive discussion would focus on why certain air forces were more effective than others and what effect this had on the war as a whole. To give a specific and highly relevant example, the RAF exerted an influence on the Luftwaffe's resource distribution in 1941 which was far in excess of what any discussion of aces would suggest.
Regards,
Paul
|
I totally agree, the number of individuals' kills are not very important, much more important (and easier to research) are the effectiveness of units and organizations and their effects on overall situation. One can e.g. say that the physical effect of Bader's Big Wing was in reality much smaller than the number of its claims indicates but it still had substantial psycological impact.
Juha