[Adriano Baumgartner]

Regarding the claims, one need to also have a look at the total combat sorties flown (Feindflug). If memory does not fail me, at least half a dozen LW fighter pilots flew 1,000 or close to that number of combat sorties.
I remember at least one V.V.S. fighter pilot who completed at least 1,000 sorties. On the other hand, the RAF pilots were rotated home, or grounded as Flight Instructors at OTU for some time before rejoining for a 2nd or 3rd or 4th Tour. Some of the most well known RAF fighter pilots chalked more than 500 combat sorties (from memory one reached 600+) and on the US side, at least one of the Fighter boys reached the 500-600 combat sorties range.
MOST of the LW airmen flew without rotation....continuously....Rudel (not a fighter pilot) flew 17 combat sorties once. The LW bomber pilots chalked hundreds of combat sorties, whilst the RAF's top airmen flew 100+ (from memory the recordist flew something around 130 sorties). Some US bomber pilots chalked the 100 mark too...but they soon were rotated home. Batcher you all know flew all throughout the war...and was shot down or hit several times.
BUT, the total tally is not one sided business, one must look beyound the number of combat sorties, to other factors:
1) Luck (be at the right place on the right time and not being shot down before attacking)
2) Number of enemies and favorable position to shoot them down,
3) Marksmanship,
4) Weaponery (guess that if the RAF did have 20mm guns or .50 guns in 1940, their tally at the Battle of Britain would have been higher! And on several books it is said that one 30mm LW shell was suficient to bring down a fighter or a twin-engined machine);
5) Training
6) Ground support (logistic, mechanic support, etc.)

Anyway it is a fascinating subject and maybe the point that Vince put here is WHY only the LW claims are being scrutinized after WW2? Why NOT the other side is being researched too? At least a French Historian is cross-checking all the claims of the Normandie-Niemen unit and the % of positive claims he found (post-war study) is incredibly low...

I believe that with open archives, we will see in the futur a bunch of new books and researches cross-checking those claims and "Oficial" lists. It is an interesting field of researches, still open.

Nice thread by the way.