Quote:
Originally Posted by Adriano Baumgartner
Most of post-war studies focus only on the LW system and the LW airmen who "apparently faked" their claims.
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Perhaps on Carl Sagan's principle that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"? Whilst I don't doubt that many claims in every air force did not correspond to enemy losses, it seems reasonable to think that the more claims there are, the greater the likelihood that some are errorneous. And there is another point here, in the Great War the highest German, French and British Empire claimants fell in the 60–80 range. In the Second World War the gap between Hartmann (352), Bong (40) and Johnson (34) is of a quite different order so I can see why people look for explanations.