[thenelm]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, did guys over/under claim? Obviously. Good Lord, these guys, from all countries, were fighting a battle in an environment where if you actually watched your 'claim' all the way into the ground, you'd more than likely end up dead yourself. Can we ascribe actual kills to specific individuals claims, sure, for some guys, assuming we know specifically who they were fighting against, and in probably more often than not these types of combat were small unit vs small unit. On the other hand we're also assuming specifically that these guys, from all sides, always knew in this ever changing environment, exactly where they were over the area they were flying over - a pretty bizarre assumption in an active 3-dimensional combat environment, especially when over anything but your home country, even with maps - again something you might not want to be spending lots of time referring to with enemy opponents all around? Can we make intelligent guesses/assumptions as to who may have shot down who? Again sure. But the only real way to accurately check true results is through claims versus losses. But trying to ascertain individual results, i.e. who got who, will always have limitations with some of the huge air battles that occurred in any theater of the war. Even gun camera films seems to seldom lead to a 100% identification of one's opponent other than aircraft type. I could go on (and on), but it just seems to me that a lot of this stuff, while useful to a point, doesn't result in any where near an accurate accounting. And, again something I've said before, trying to ascertain or ascribe motive for 'overclaiming' to guys long dead, from all sides, is kind of an exercise in futility. The attempt is nice, but the result - eh. Please note that I'm not saying all this as attempt to justify just the LW claims. Its a known fact that the RAF overclaimed by something like 3 to 1 in the BoB, but officialdom allowed those claims to stand as a matter of morale for the UK. There is also the Flying Tigers who claimed some 300 victories over the JAAF versus about 100 documented losses. The Japanese? Well, many of the claims from some of their guys just don't add up, but that's a whole field that will always be suspect do to lack of records, or maybe even more likely the language/translation barrier. These are just a couple of the more notable non-LW situations. Probably wouldn't take too long to find other examples.