[Juha]

As the question of this thread, it is very difficult if not impossible from summer of 40 to summer of 42 because there were so many big air battles, overclaiming was so common and almost total loss of LW's documents. It mght be possible to try to form oppinion on the claim patterns of some aces by researching smaller combats where little or no overclaiming happened or where the ace in question was the only claimant. And then try to draw some conclusions based on those results. But even this kind of research is rather iffy and as are said, the claim accuracy of certain pilots isn't so important, much more important is the effectiveness of unit(s) and operations. If there were unlimited resources the true achievements of the aces would have some curiosity value and IMHO it would be nice to know the true results because it seems that in the end it was up to individuals how accurate their claims were and it would serve some kind of justice if those accurate claimers could get the appreciation they deserved.

Juha