[Johannes]

Hi Michel

When John Foreman and myself compiled the, or should I say our abschüßelist we were quite adamant to ignore anything published before. We determined that the mikrofilms was our primary source, but we would also checked it against flugbucher, Leistubgbücher, individual pilots personal abschusseliste and staffel abschussetafel.

With v.n.e-a.s.m claims we included them as a "kill" i.e confirmed, many pilots had these confirmed completely without witnesses, these were usually the higher ranking pilots (by actual rank, more than score totals). As most claims took more than a year to confirm anyway, this later claim we would certainly assume to have been confirmed.

We were also trying not to discriminate i.e the "over-claimers", in fact we had been warned-off about it, so sometimes we would mention if the pilots claims matched Allied losses. Erik Mombeek has published an article exactly about the claims system, and it's abuse. I think Bar comes into the honest, but not fully following the system category. Sometimes we would mention if an unconfirmed claim "was known to have fallen", but wouldn't mention if known not to have fallen. It is not our place to confirm or otherwise a claim. Nowotny would be the biggest fraudster of all, yet we merely listed the official claims knowing full well most never actual fell. If the truth was known during the war Barkhorn and Rall would be the highest scorers !

So basically to listed this claim as confirmed because it appears on the mikrofilms.

Kind regards

Johannes