Quote:
Originally Posted by Andreas Brekken
Hi
I for one would be very interested to see the documents concerning the Bf 109's on 27.09.1941 as these would be additional losses that were never recorded by I./JG 77. And since they were observed by Soviet ground based observers, I am sure that they recorded this in detail and would like to see the corresponding documents detailing the information taken from the wreckage.
Sure it wasn't a Hurricane they saw? LaGG? MiG? 
I thought I should really spark this discussion by adding the following: As we know the German fighter pilots were almost flawless with regards to their claims, while the poles, americans and brits have been documented again and again to have been notorious with regards to filing falsified claims, I do believe we have to be very cautious when reading the claims list of pilots of said nationalities.
But as I know from previous experience, certain members of the board does not seem to have a developed sense of humour or the ability to spot what is supposed to be ironic, I thought it would be best not to do it
What I however do believe is very important is that at least the people serious with regards to documenting the WWII airwar try to do this based on comparing the notes from both or rather ALL sides, as even the more famous of writers among us have made errors, simply because the necessary documents were unavailable to them. And even better, try not to be biased... even if it is hard!
I do also believe we should stop using the word KILL entirely, and rather use the term CLAIM. There are thousands of reasons that it is hard to verify a claim - several of them connected to the fact that it is not always easy to find documentation at all - simply because this kind of information has always been sensitive and thus more or less kept secret by the armed forces. We discuss here single incidents with regards to how many soviet fighters were lost on a given day, when the russian researchers of today cannot even agree rounded to the closest million how many soviet citizens 'disappeared' under Stalin.
I have been waiting for years for publications to appear stating the details with regards to soviet aircraft losses during WWII, as I have heard that they are supposedly well recorded and detailed. To date no such research (at least in english and to my knowledge) has appeared, with original sources stated, but I will continue to wait and I am really looking forward to cross reference the claims and losses when and if such publications finally appear.
Regards,
Andreas B |
I would like to add my 5 cents here, as I work for several years comparing some German records with what we have in our military archives.
As regards to the "flawless" of German claims, that is absolute falsehood. There are lots of examples for number of pilots from German side being too optimistic, not to say more, about their claims. I do not know the exact reason of this trend. But in some cases I can presume that it was made deliberately.
Now about publications, you can see the the example of well-researched two-sided info books, based on the ammount of Soviet archive materials. I mean recent works by Berstrom and his co-authors, "Graf-Grislawski" and the third part of BKRS. The major stake of material from Soviet side has its origin in the first-account TsAMO, TsVMA and RGVA records. Thanks to Vlad Antipov and Andrey Dikov and previously to Andrey Mikhailov, who handled lots of their records to Christer Berstrom. Due to this, Soviet side material in these books are of perfect quality. However, some of the sharp issues, including German overclaim for few pilots, are not highlighted even in this books. Good example of this is the 200th claim by Graf. Good description of combat was given, but no concrete conclusion that this claim was pure overclaim, without any proof from Soviet side...