[Rob Romero]

Don, first let me say in all sincerity, that I am not a troll, or interested in a “flame war.” So if there are any hard feelings, please accept the fact that I am not interested in generating or sustaining animosity. To be honest, I was a little flattered that I could unintentionally provoke an aviation historian of your caliber to respond in the manner that you did (as with a child, negative attention is better than no attention at all!). I do aspire in a manner of my own to be a serious historian (I won’t detail the various projects I am working on here), but I AM ALSO VERY INTERESTED -as are many others- in such arcane and perhaps historically insignificant topics as “aces” and who in fact were really the “top guns” (e.g., the cult of the “Red Baron” (92.5% Historically Verified Victories)). Thus I am not in fact primarily interested in “exposing” liars (though it is an interesting exploration of human foibles), but rather in determining who REALLY were the very best.
This current thread was the last of four such threads I first started in May of 2009. I HAVE NOT UPDATED THIS LIST IN OVER TWO YEARS (I HAVE GIVEN IT UP), though I continue to keep tabs on people’s comments along such lines and sometimes respond to them. I ESPECIALLY APPRECIATE posters, such as NOKOSE, EVEGNY VELICHKO and others, who detail specific claims and losses, especially when they shine light through the opacity of the Ostfront air war. Perhaps someone will collect these and compile a listing of historically verifiable victories (Wink! Wink! (and Don these Winks are not directed at you)). Perhaps such an endeavor will never be comprehensive, but if sufficient sampling is achieved, it might shed valuable light on strategy, tactics, campaigns, battles, and yes individual pilots.
I will respond to a few of your comments and hope we can agree to let it go at that.

Preddy should have been given a victory credit for an aircraft that was scrapped after returning to base damaged? By whom, for heaven’s sake, and using what data?

I don’t mean that he should have been given credit AT THE TIME, but by historians subsequently evaluating the engagement. So given the “Preddy example” as described, he should have claimed no more than 4 shot down as, based on the historical record, no more than 4 were shot down. If a 5th aircraft ended up being scrapped, we can NOW “credit” him with 5 victories.

And just as important, why?

Simply because it’s interesting.

Overclaim ratios differed in different air forces, theaters, time periods, and units, and calling a pilot “untruthful” whose claims were found acceptable in his Staffel or squadron is grossly unfair.

But my point is that there really shouldn’t be an issue of overclaiming if one used FIRM criteria [such as if the pilot bailed out, the target exploded, there was a catastrophic component failure (i.e., wing or tail shot off) or the plane was SEEN to have hit the ground. And such criteria were used in evaluating gun camera film. It is also why “PROBABLE” victories were incorporated as claiming options by the RAF and USAAF and HSS (Formation Seperation or "Crippled") claims were allowed as victory claims by the Luftwaffe .]

since victory documents were not handled by a special team of “ace” clerks, any statement of how a claim “should have” been handled is naïve.

My issue is with how inaccurate "full victory" or "kill" claims were made BY THE PILOTS in the first place.

However, your table of overclaimers is . . . nearly all allegation and rumor . . .

My hope and intention was to encourage posts on SPECIFIC engagement data such as that provided by the likes of NOKOSE, EVEGNY VELICHKO and others.

"100% accuracy" was unattainable

Though it is perhaps arrogant for someone who has never been under fire to say, I will risk the accusation of temerity to suggest that it should have better than it was. And the fact that it was not better was due in part to perhaps understandable, but nonetheless all too human flaws.

Aerial victories . . . in no way helped determine the winner of the war.

Air superiority helps determine who wins the war, so actual versus claimed victories are very relevant in such discussion (wasn’t “here come those last 50 Spitfires” or some such remark the bitter rejoinder of Luftwaffe bomber crews during the BoB.

JG 2’s confirmed claims always exceeded those of JG 26, even though it was kept to the west of JG 26, out of the major route of both the RAF in 1941-42 and the USAAF in 1943-44, and had fewer engagements and opportunities to score. Why was JG 26 given the prize position in the theater and not JG 2? Berlin had to have known the truth about the victories being obtained by the two units – and Göring came close to telling JG 26 exactly that.

I think you are making my point exactly

. . . if the JG 26 veterans can be believed.

Isn’t that in itself using allegation to denigrate JG2’s veterans?
In the 1980s I did serious research into air combat at Pearl Harbor and interviewed Soryu A6M2 ace Iyozo Fujita and all the USAAF fighter pilots who engaged the Japanese that were still alive. Harry Brown (7) went on to dispute the “Kill” claim of Bob Rogers his XO. According to Brown this led to hard feelings which eventually led to his being transferred out of the 47th Pursuit Squadron. Brown indicated of his experiences later in the war with Kenny’s 5th Air Force in the Southwest Pacific, deliberate falsification of claims was far from unknown. Though unstinting in his praise of America’s all-time top ace Richard Bong (40), who ceaselessly sought to perfect his air combat skills while Brown and the rest were carousing on the ground, Brown implicated another top ranked P-38 pilot. On one occasion he witnessed this pilot -shot down over his own airbase- submit claims -confirmed by the AA crew he parachuted next to (!) - for 3 enemy aircraft -aircraft which Brown contends this pilot could not have destroyed. Though he would not directly identify the pilot, circumstantially it became CLEAR he was implicating Thomas B. McGwire (38). Now, these were the allegations of one man, who perhaps had an axe to grind, but should we ignore it or bring forth the allegations and let readers decide for themselves. Perhaps we should also ignore the story of the “Schwarm of Liars” (Olt. Ferdinand Vögl (31) Ofw. Karl-Heinz Bendert (55) Ofw. Erwin Sawallisch (33) Ofw. Franz Stigler (28)) supposedly exposed to JG27 Kdr. Edu Neumann (13) by Lt. Hans-Arnold Stahlschmidt (59) as reported by Chris Shores and Hans Ring in Fighters of the Desert (I say allegedly because Stahlschmidt was KIA shortly thereafter). Last year “Mark R” posted a great thread on Jagdwaffe P-38 Claims in Afrika. As Juha suggested this was a pretty fair evaluation because the P-38 was an “unusually easily recognizable plane.” Because the sampling was small, I was only able to reach personal conclusions about two pilots. Erich Rudorffer (224) claimed to have shot down 7 P-38s. For 6 of his claims no corresponding P-38s were lost. For the 7th claim, Jagdwaffe pilots claimed 10 P-38s (including 1 by him) for the loss of 7. So on this occasion, Rudorffer probably but not certainly shot one down (perhaps a P-38 inadvertently swam into his sights). Evgeny Velichko examined another of his actions in Russia where few if any actually went down (0-2 (or ~1) Kills for 9 Claims). These two examples (1.7 Kills for 16 "Confirmed" Victoriies (a decent sample)) suggest an actual success rate of 10.6% or 24 actual kills; making him a multiple ace, but in 1000+ combat missions, no "Uber-Experte". It’s no secret that Rudorffer was shunned by his own circle post war - allegedly for his blatant dishonesty (such allegations stemming as far back from the 1970s I believe). My own personal sense is that Rudorffer was in fact an egrigious exaggerator who took credit for purposes of self-aggrandizement while others died; feel free to disagree. Kurt Bühligen (112) seems to have been another case entirely. Bühligen claimed to have shot down 13 P-38s - more than 10% of his total victory claims in WWII; a not insubstantial sample. Bühligen (112) almost certainly shot down at least 4 P-38s and statistically speaking, probably shot down 5.44, giving him a success rate of 41.8%. Extrapolating outward, we might project that Bühligen actually shot down a total of 46 aircraft making him one hell of a dangerous adversary. I would suggest his overclaiming - to whatever extent it was - resulted from aggressive overconfidence ('I hit it therefore it MUST have gone down') rather than from the outright dishonesty suggested by Rudorffer’s record. One can sense Bühligen's brashness practically radiating from his photos. As the old ditty about fighter pilots goes, "You can tell a fighter pilot . . . but you can't tell him much."

Was Roman Consul Varro a bombastic populist who foolishly rushed headlong into Hannibal’s trap at Cannae as indicated by the annalists Polybius and Livy (our only real sources and distant one’s at best)? Did Benteen fail to relieve Custer at the Little Bighorn because of personal animosity? Was Lee Harvey Oswald a “lone nut” or was he the “patsy” he claimed to be? History is full of allegations, recriminations and controversy; should these all be heedlessly ignored, or should they be considered and evaluated in light of the TOTALITY of the evidence and let each come to their own conclusion, be it well or ill informed. There comes a time when anthropologists cease to treat bones with the dignity accorded those whom are recently deceased. Similarly there comes a time when historians too can pick at proverbial bones.

My final comment here, and the one which I mean the most sincerely, is that I hope that people, even if they do not approve, will at least tolerate those who seek to pursue this line of inquiry.

Respectfully,

Rob Romero

PS I used spell check this time, but don’t promise to always do so in the future. LOL