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Old 20th August 2008, 18:58
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Re: 1939-45 airpower and professional historians

Grozibou
Quote: “The fact remains that publishing such figures is totally unrealistic and very naïve indeed.”

I beg to disagree, that the end result ended .66 ie 2/3 is only a logical result of his method, using archival material of all combatants he had tried to figure out who shot down what, and the fact that LW a/c had many other opponents besides French fighters, ie sometimes a French fighter pilot got only ½, 1/3, ¼… credit of a shot down LW a/c.

IMHO his method is in principle accurate, of course there is always some subjectiveness in conclusions and some inexactness because much of the material was lost during the war and because it isn’t always possible to reconstruct fast aerial combats from combat reports etc. of different sides, but required very much work. Is it accurate in practice, I don’t know. I own only a copy of the first book of the series. BTW I ordered it because you recommended it warmly before you changed your mind. I should have bought also at least the second one also because of my interest on 19 May but that project is still on hold, waiting time when I’ll have time to continue it.

Juha