Hi, all (specially to Yevgeny Belichko and Massimo)
I'm "the new guy of the block", so (in spite reading some literature about aerial warfare in WW2 in the Eastern front), I ask you some patience till get at tone with you, guys, that evidently knows a lot about the topic.
In another thread in this forum I saw an interesting attempt to determine how many actual kills out of a certain amount of claims actually scored some German aces (together with the subsequent percentages, and which method was used to determine the actual tally).
I would like (if you're not against) to make a similar analysis regarding some Soviet aces, and the one I'm more interested is no other than the great tactician Aleksandr Pokryskin. After reading an excellent translation of his book "Небо Войны" (The Sky of War") from Russian to Spanish, and beginning to read "Познав себя в бою" in Russian (something like "Knowing himself in combat") I'm delighted with the plain and honest style of writing of Pokryshkin. For his description of the aerial combats he was involved, in most of the cases it seems clear that he is absolutely certain about many (if not all) of his victories. But I would like to see how many of his claims match actual German losses.
I'm specially interested in his claims made during the Battle of Kuban, and in the air battle over Bolshoy Tokmak on 21 September 1943, when he claimed to shot down three Ju.88s (two were credited, the third was apparently downed by the explosion of the first bomber downed by Pokryshkin) and a fourth was apparently flamed by Grigoriy Rechkalov. Anybody knows which were the actual losses suffered by the Luftwaffe on that date?
Thank you very much in advance. If this post is more correctly placed in another thread, please tell me in which.
Kind regards,
Diego Zampini