Quote:
Originally Posted by RodM
Hello One & All,
(and I have faced the accusation that British Bomber Command records are not complete or deliberately hide losses...utter rubbish).
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And Graham Boak said: "Every nation in aerial warfare was has been accused of downplaying their losses. Such arguments have never, to my knowledge, been demonstrated as correct."
This great forum likes very tightly focused discussion, but can we broaden it here? Does anyone know of actual documented cases of systematic understatement of losses in official records in any air war?
I've done some research about the Korean War, and there are also those who study that war, mainly from the perspective of the MiG AF's, who say the US systematically and severely understated its air combat losses. I have not found evidence of that in fairly extensive study of those records v specific MiG claims. Although, there are some errors in those records, especially in view of specific opposing claims which the record keepers didn't have benefit of, and some omissions and errors in official totals v various individual records. But those errors don't change the big picture much, they bridge little of the gap between official loss totals and the opposing side's claims.
But is there some exception to this, any air war where the then-secret record of air combat losses of one side have been shown seriously at variance with their actual losses, in a statistically significant number of cases?
Joe