[Franek Grabowski]

Johannes

Originally Posted by Johannes

I am not trying to discredit the Luftwaffe, they were far more accurate in their claims than most other airforces. What I have are evidence of 66650 confirmed claims, sometimes this evidence is the abschussemeldung which give about as much evidence as there is about an individual claim. Matching Allied loses to Luftwaffe claims shows there was overclaiming, usually the same individuals time and again. "Viermot" claims are to be treated differently, you didn't need to actually shoot the bomber down to make a claim, this would be a quirk of the points system.

I really do not care about reputation of Luftwaffe, an arm of a criminal regime. I rather mean that the statements are abusive to understanding the history. As yet nobody has done any comparison study of claims, credited victories and losses, and likely never will due to lack of documents. Therefore statement that Luftwaffe victories were more accurate than any other (or most of it) is just unfounded.

My objective for asking about Eder is to establish the possibility about the "Twelve" jet claims always associated with him. It has been pointed out that the fifty days to acquire his jet kills has been with Karl's help(many thanks for that) been extended to eighty days.....a far more realistic time allowance. I asked about his honesty because I am no expert on that, but after the Walther Dahl saga I am a bit realistic to the possibility that what has been "fact" for seventy years might not actually be so. Fact is there is no flugbucher/abschussemeldung or abschusselist that shows evidence of Eder's claims, but that doesn't mean he didn't make them. With Erich Rudorffer we have the same twelve total of jet claims, only two were generally written about, yet after viewing his flugbuch (one of these wasn't correct) twelve proved to be the correct number, though they were later than expected.

I understand the proper approach should be, what he claimed first, what has been initially verified, and what was finally credited. Only after that it is possible to check if any of those claims/victories match to any losses/combats. Aside, I am not sure if victories of so late period of the war were ever confirmed or approved.

My co-author John Foreman always said that if JG26 claimed they would match Allied loses very well, if JG 2 claimed not very well, if both claimed again not very well, but he would accept that it was JG2 not JG26 overclaiming.

As long as we do not know, how the verification process looked like and what were differences between JG 2 and JG 26 subordination in this regard, we cannot make such statements. My impression is, that intelligence officer quickly received a list of wrecks found, and then did a preliminary elimination of claims. Therefore JG 26 looks much better on paper, but we do not know the reality. We also do not know, how many of the victories were shared ones. Plus of course, JG 26 got credit for aircraft lost to another reason.

Regarding been lost in another way, actually I am in agreement, in films made during the war British bombers were always reported as lost to flak, whereas the vast majority fell to fighters. Even a pilot being shot down may have been surprised and thought flak, yet could have been caught by a fighter.

During the night all cats are grey. I am talking about day operations in large numbers. There are numerous instances of aircraft going down to technical reasons, collisions, friendly fire, flak and other. I did not do research for any large scale, selected combats only, so no general conclusion, but a statement of fact.

Best regards

Franek