[Rob Romero]

Ruy,

When I first saw you had become involved in this discussion, you got me nervous, as I thought you were banishing me for life for excessively long posts! ;-)

I think you misunderstood my intent in distinguishing and including HSS claims. A problem I am cautioning researchers to consider is that the Germans defined Victories, differently than in the West. The first (revised) Total of (88) is what we in the west would understand as Kills. However, the Luftwaffe deemed that any pilot who had the courage to knock a Viermot out of a Pulk, was worthy of being bestoyed a Luftsiege. Thus the Jagdwaffe claimed 88 ‘Kills’ but 114 ‘Victories’. Like you my point is that one should ignore HSS, in assessing the reliability of German claims. Thus when I calculated Jagdwaffe claim accuracy, I divided estimated 8th AF losses to Luftwaff Fighters (61-69) by 88 to achieve a reasonable 69.32%-78.41% Claim Veracity.

83 Abschüsse (Outright Victory Claims) (12 of which were Pending Official Confirmation)
5 Endgültige Vernichtung Claims (Final Destruction of HSS or Cripples)
88 Total Victory Claims
+
26 HSS Claims (Bomber Separated From Formation -i.e. Crippled)
114 Total Claims

Thanks for TOCH!

Rob