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Old 1st March 2026, 10:50
Laurent Rizzotti Laurent Rizzotti is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Paris, France
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Re: VMF-121 victory claims

Ratio between claims and real enemy losses vary widely between various fronts, sides and units. Situation in Pacific was especially complicated by the fact that most of the battle happen over no man's land (jungle, sea and so on) so no confirmation could be done from the ground most of the times.

Such confirmation was not always a confirmation of real kills. In BoB, much of the German losses happened over Britain, still the authorities awarded a number of victories for above the number of known wrecks...

Keith, by reading your post, it seems to you you are implying that Soviet and German claims were wore than the 3 to 1 ratio. I won't comment on Soviet claims because I have no data, but for most of the war (I will exclude 1945 where data is very scarce) Germans claims were below a ratio of two to one. Individuals or units may have a far higher ratio, but this is counterbalanced by some aces having a very good one.
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