[Jim P.]

How do I say this without coming across as sounding like I believe that the LW fighter pilots and their claims are somehow totally infallible. We all know that at least one unit, 4./JG 27, was caught fudging their claims, and there are certain other individuals, like Rudorffer, who have many claims that are suspect for that same reason. Like everybody else here, I'm interested in finding out 'who got who' where a claim and loss can be matched up. But frankly this exercise of 'severe overclaimers' versus 'reliable claimers' is just so much sophistry. It just seems to me that applying some ulterior motive to a particular claim that's not verified by a specific loss by somebody who's long dead is unfair and somewhat silly. Air combat by its very nature is a very dynamic exercise conducted in 3-dimensional space. You want to stare your latest claim into the ground, so be it, but you will also in all likelihood end up dead. Rall is, by his own admission, a perfect example of this, though fortunately for him he only lost a thumb. Dr. Prien also explained the circumstance of a claim by Knoke that was questioned in this thread, yet the fact that he had to do so because somebody thought it was a bogus claim with the intent of padding one's score just illustrates how silly this exercise can become.

The bottom line is everybody overclaimed for any number of reasons and to try and assign motive 70 years on is futile, unless there is documentation to prove otherwise. In this country we have the legend of the 'Flying Tigers'. They claimed some 300 Japanese aircraft. Dan Ford essentially proved that the actual losses for the Japanese was about 100 machines. The man was excoriated by the surviving vets from the unit, but the bottom line was his research was corroborated by other published sources. "But the Japanese were lying" was the usual response by the Tiger vets and defenders, but, well you get the picture.