[HGabor]

Marcus, this is a fair question which requires a fair answer. What I said about the lost planes is based on two Soviet air armies (5 and 17 VA) between October 1944 - July 1945 that we studied. For this time period we have hundreds of Soviet mechanical reports (copies) of incoming planes (by serials) and plane losses (by serials) including wear and tear replacements, - everything from the Central Military Archives of the Russian Federation (TsAMO RF). The very same AC serials are repeated in the upcoming inventory reports until the plane was lost/written off. Then it is obviously not listed anymore. Moreover the reports overlap each other at multiple levels of reports: regiment, division, Corps, Army level reports, as well as loss reports, personal achievement reports, etc. Losses are all supported by the field recoveries we made with our aircraft museum. In other words: the discovered numbers on the unearthed aircraft remains match the Soviet loss reports for 100%.

Overall we are talking about a library worth, cross referencing material of several thousand pages. So this is such a massive 'databank', that nobody, like nobody would make up just for fun. Not to mention that these reports were internal reports for their own personal use (in order to get new plane replacements, etc.), not for the post-war public to see. (These papers got declassified only after the early 2000s.) The other thing is that mission reports reveal the time when the planes were in the air and where their losses occurred. If you compare them to the Axis claims, it is obvious that if they claimed a plane in the morning, but the loss occurred in the afternoon, then it was an overclaim/fraud/you name it no matter if the date is the same. We are down on the level of hours and minutes, not just 'days'!

By the way, you can see some document samples in my earlier comments. I hope this answers your question.

Gabor