[Johannes]

Hi Michel

I have just been working with the flugbuch of Hugo Broch, who himself claimed exactly a hundred Sowiet aircraft, but confirmed only eighty-one. Many pilots scores include unconfirmed, others(in the West) are based on a points system.
Broch's is interesting, he basically numbers those confirmed. Don't know if he later added the numbering, or knew at the time that certain planes he shot down would not be confirmed, so don't know if he ever did any paperwork.

Also he flew with Erich Rudorffer, so you would expect him to be making false claims, but actually whenever Rudorrfer is obviously flying with Broch then his claims are minimal, they are only excessive when flying with Kurt Tangermann, it's very noticeable, I therefore conclude the Broch was not corrupted by Rudorffer(possibly not even approached), and made honest claims.

I have also noted that a US "viermot" lose usually resulted in two Luftwaffe claims, also that JG 2 alone sometimes had two pilots with the same anerk number on their claims.

Am I correct in thinking also the the 300-302 units were formed with the task of dividing the "viermots" up. I would guess this led to a very high turn-over of pilots, who seemed to usually fly heavily armed aircraft i.e designed to combat bombers not fighters.

The Ritterkreuzträger Erwin Laskowski is always quoted as having about forty-five victories. He made eleven in Russia, of which ten were confirmed, then there are five "viermots" on the mikro films, which are numbered in his flugbuch, but scattered among those five are six over "heavies" he details in his flugbuch that he doesn't number, and are not found on the mikro films i.e they were not confirmed. So only fifteen victories as opposed to three times that number he is associated with. Where the forty-five number comes from I cannot say, undoubtedly is has been duplicated over decades, even "cast in stone" as thought to be correct for so long, there is nothing to suggest it came from Laskowski. Same thing for Woidich he know his total is 110, yet his abschusse list yields only eighty-two, i'm pretty sure that the 110 didn't come from his mouth!

In my opinion Kroker's total, filled with quality claims though it is, is in fact nine confirmed victories.

Thanks to everybody else for enlightening me about his death.

Kind Regards

Johannes