It's very easy to show overclaiming by Japanese pilots, given that they were among the most enthusiastic over-claimers of WW2. Alas, the AVG buffs then turn about and say, 'Well, they
lied about how many planes they shot down, so they must have lied about how many planes they lost'. The notion that you look to an air force's records to see how many planes we lost, and to the opposition's to see how many we shot down, seems utterly to escape them. (As does the fact that overclaiming is not at all the same thing as lying.)
That so many Japanese records were lost or deliberately destroyed in 1945 of course fuels this argument. That Allied records were likewise lost (for example, those of 67 Squadron upon its retreat to India) doesn't seem however to invalidate Allied loss records!
It was the AVG's good or bad luck to regularly meet one very famous and one fairly famous fighter group, the 64th and 77th Sentais. There are several books by 64th Sentai veterans, and you could hardly ask for a better job of reconstructing a group's war history than Rick Dunn has done with "Double Lucky" on
the Warbird's Forum.
Blue skies! -- Dan Ford