[yogybär]

Gentlemen,

I also work in such a big company with >400.000 employees. And it is a german company.

We have reporting structures, "divisions", (business) units and "Stäbe". We have very good software for tracking workhours, costs, profit etc. pp. And also, there is politics inside this organization. I KNOW that in some places comfortable lies are prefered. Wether it is to camouflage own faults of to get more resources then really necessary in order to lower the risk in ones own "Abteilung" (department or wether it is just to blow up ones own importance... there are a lot of possible motivations.

Similar motivations were in the Luftwaffes "employees" also, I am sure. Therefore, I am sure that even in the german Luftwaffe figures were manipulated on different levels to different extents.

Examples, some historically proven, other from fantasy:
- A Mechanic in III/JG54 knows that his pilot is on the edge of his nerves. So, he finds out that the 190D-9 has a "Masseschluß" (electrical problem) and the "poor" pilot cannot fly on ops. One more A/C unservicable.
- Staffelkapitän XY wants to be protect a pilot who wrecked his plane by error, so writes a report "due to tech. reasons". Or even better: Lt. Lipfert forgot to lower the wheels of his 109 during a landing. Explanation afterwords: They didn't want to come out... ts ts ts, always mechanical problems
- Kommodore XY's I./JGZZ has several A/C crashlanded on the AF due to enemy fire / dogfights. His team had to use them as "sparepart-spender", so one week later he is happy that he can report them as "blown up when retreating from the AF" or such.

Surely there were a lot more reasons and even more excuses used in the organizsation "Luftwaffe", which we do not know any more today. Similar to the excuses we find all over the place in our "perfectly organized" "Global Player" companies.

And I am very sure that this was and still is the case in all other Air Forces all over the planet. Maybe even worse in the VVS, where one can read a lot of examples of deliberate excessive claims etc. pp.

Therefore it always would be good to countercheck all information available to get a full picture. But still one should consider that it is only a picture!