RLM confirmations and German aces.

[krichter33]

I was wondering around when did the RLM stop confirming German victories for pilots. Also, I was wondering if anyone had any information or lists of any of the top German pilots, and how many victories they had that were confirmed by the RLM. I know a lot of the late war victories weren't able to be officially confirmed, though they were historically added to their scores. So if anyone had information about the pilots with more than 200 historical kills, as well as aces such as Buhligen, Krupinski, Schoer, Hackl, Eder, and mostly Western Front aces, I would greatly appreciate it. Also, I'm only interested in RLM confirmations, not post war readjustment based on Allied loss records. There are plenty of other threads that deal with that topic. Thank you very much.

[Johannes]

Hi

Just what I have been working on. Buhligen has u/c in his total, as does Molders, Philipp, Schuck, Graf(in the west). I have marked each claim on there lists as represented on the Micro Films or not, those in a period covered by the Micro Films I have marked as u/c if not represented. With Rall all but two as represented, and I believe his last "kill" was not submitted as he was wounded. Schuck's total of 206 is based on he himself stating that Goring told him that a further twenty-five of his u/c's had just been confirmed!

Drop me your personnal e.mail address and we can compare lists and totals, I have listed 7600 pilots with confirmations of which 2650 were aces.

Kind Regards

Johannes

P.S I also have Barkhorn's claims dates, and date of confirmation for each one.

[John Beaman]

Guys, save yourself some work and look at Tony Wood's great site for claims.

www.don-caldwell.we.bs/claims/tonywood.htm

As for when the claim confirmation stopped, IIRC it was the late fall of 1944.

[krichter33]

Thank you all for the information. John, so the last official claims that were confirmed occurred in late 1944? I thought it was about Jan. 45, but I'm probably wrong on that.
The main reason I'm interested in this subject is because I know a lot of the late war claims are just claims that were never officially confirmed, that were mostly recorded, in logbook or not, by the individual pilots. Now, the last thing I would ever do is suggest these late claims were dishonest, since I believe most fighter pilots made honest claims. However, for historical sake, I wanted to put together some kind of list that shows the total historical victory claims alongside the confirmed claims. Of course, the historical victory lists will always stand and won't be replaced by any other list, but it's simply something I'm curious about.

[Jim P.]

Did the confirmation process stop? Or were the records lost?

[mars]

It simply stopped, Luftwaffe had their hand pretty full at that time.

[FalkeEins]

Originally Posted by John Beaman

As for when the claim confirmation stopped, IIRC it was the late fall of 1944.

earlier than that even...

eg, the last claims awarded an official confirmation in JG 300 are dated 28 September 1944.

'official' claims filed for JG 300 end on 24 December 1944

(p353 JG 300 Lorant/Goyat)