Quote:
Originally Posted by Frank Olynyk
Speaking of Korea, why are there no grupi (sp?) (shared) claims? Is this the reason for the apparent high overclaiming? All shared claims became full credit? Look at the second volume Mikhail did (which completely supercedes the first one) and there are a very large number of shared claims. But none in Korea.
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Frank,
I don't know the origins of change in that policy, but as you say published (and archival, that I know of) sources about Soviet victory credits in Korea do not seem to feature the concept of shared victories. The victory totals for units in periods of time are the simple sum of those awarded to individuals, by and large it would seem.
Duplication of claims in connection with real US losses is surely a major category of overclaims for the Soviets in Korea. Almost all US air combat losses were suffered in combats at the same general place and time of day, recorded by both sides (exceptions are a few night disappearances and combats with Chinese or NK units without Soviet ones also around in same general area and time window). Most Soviet victory credits are in bunches of a few to low single digits in combats or time windows where a single US a/c was lost. I would say these outnumber the credits related to combats both sides recognize but where no US a/c were lost, though the latter were also common. Multiple US losses in a single combat/time window also occurred but weren't that common, and again Soviet victory credits in combats the US didn't record at all are virtually unheard of.
The question you ponder is part of a more fundamental one about Soviet credits in Korea. To what extent did the crediting authorities realize in real time how excessive those credits were, by most WWII standards of overclaiming? I'm not speaking now of intel gatherers on Soviet side who found info suggesting the credits were excessive, which happened, but of the people actually putting in for credits and those saying yes or no. 'Shared' as well as fractional destroyed, official 'probable' and 'damaged' credits* I would view all as ways to knock down claims of a/c 'destroyed' to (what intelligence or past experience says is) a more realistic level while still psychologically 'compensating' pilots for their efforts and risks. The 64th Fighter Corps and its divisions and regiments didn't want to do that apparently. There are suggestions why this might have been so (monetary compensation per victory for the 'volunteers' is one) but AFAIK there's no analytical study of it. Of course to study the reasons first you have to recognize the overclaim rate for what it was, which the research community on this still does not fully. We still see in print 'USAF only admitted' such and such loss in a particular combat, although this can seen as a euphemism for 'losses claimed did not occur by any evidence' in the great majority of cases, studying the individual combats case by case from both sides.
*Real MiG losses were a reasonably high % of US 'destroyed' credits in Korea (by fighters, not B-29's) by WWII standards, but of course the % would drop if you added in 50%+ of official 'probables' and some % of 'damaged' credits (as it also would in WWII cases where those categories were officially used). But probable/damage did in fact represent some of the real enemy losses.
Joe