justified RAF claims vs hard kills

[kettbo]

I've not read up on the RAF since high school. I have seen a few threads about over-claiming on both sides for the Axis and Allied fence. I am re-reading Caldwell's JG26 War Diary Part 1. There are many references to the impressive over claiming by the RAF. With all the modern research tools, has there been a justification made using real loss records, something like Caldwell? I know the British had intercepts so at least at the top they knew that 40 claims might mean 10-15 real victories? Who was claiming all these victories? Particular units? Individuals? Any official repercussion for over-claiming? Any anecdotes of hushed-up admonishment/punishment? Is there a list with claimed kills and what the probable real tally might be?

Again, I know victories never matched claims in any air force. I was shocked by what I read in JG26 book

[Juha]

Hello George
From top of my head, at first the high echelon allowed things to stay as they were because they didn’t want to hint what they know and thought that it would have been bad for morale to disallow most of the claims but in late 1942/early 43 they decided that enough is enough ( at that time also the real results became better from RAF’s POV) and debriefing processes became tighter and so accepted claims became clearly more reliable.


Juha

[kettbo]

Thanks Juha. The RAF heads could not let the cat out of the bag and beat folks up for over claiming. But really, CALDWELL was very clear that many times that the RAF battle reports and claims were so far off that the were laughable. With my own military background, over-claiming/bragging/ fake awards and medals are frowned-on. People of this ilk are bad for morale especially if they are the leaders!

So people mention the Experten Flight, Bartels, always Hartmann comes up, and a few others when high-scoring LW pilots are mentioned. I'm curious about the RAF, Channel area fights after the Battle of Britain through end of 1942. Wondering if it was the aces, the new guys, or everybody over-claiming or can the over-claiming be traced to any specific bunch? Come to think of it, did Douglass Bader's claim raise eyebrows? I'm not current on who all the RAF honcho pilots are or where they served. IT could be a major undertaking to ferret all this out myself. I'm pretty sure few here could recite this info like a poem.

[Graham Boak]

There's no doubt that there was considerable overclaiming by the RAF at this time, but not particularly excessive considering the circumstances. An overclaiming ratio of 2-3 can be assumed as normal, all nations all theatres. It is usually greater when the fighting is over the other guy's territory, and when you get a number of units involved in a general mix-up. Much of which applies to the RAF in this case, whereas the more limited number of German pilots in these fights, and the German hit-and-run approach with only the leaders getting to shoot, both help to make their claiming more accurate.

I've seen it said that that the arrival of the Mk.IXs (with no guncamera) saw a rise in overclaiming: possibly because they allowed more chances of shooting at all. It took the introduction of a good guncamera to bring this down.

Of course, from a morale point of view it would have done little good to diminish the perceived effect of these missions. As long as the RAF were committed to the permanent offensive, getting too picky in public could have been counterproductive.

I would also take Caldwell with a little bit of salt: I was struck when I read his book how JG26 was always so accurate whereas their rivals JG2 were such wicked overclaimers. I wonder what a partisan historian of JG2 would have to say on the subject.

[Laurent Rizzotti]

In 1941-1942, most of the times the German pilots could choose when and how they engaged RAF fighters, and so the British pilots, already under pressure while fighting over enemy territory with fuel to check and with inferior aircraft, had few possibilities to check if the aircraft they hit (or believed they hit) went down or not.

Also the JG 26 diary will usually not list aircraft losses when the pilot was nit hurt (it may be cited in the text, but is not shown on the loss lists).

In this situation, any damaged German fighter had a good chance to land somewhere and be repaired. And pilots shot down may baled out and be rescued. While any Allied fighter hit had a long way to go to return to base.

Last, I had the same reaction than Graham when I read JG26 books. Given that JG2 and JG26 often fought against the same raids, considering that JG2 claims are unreliable and JG26 ones are reliable seems biased to me.

[drgondog]

With respect to Caldwell. I frequently found JG 26 claims contained in Woods List to be close to USAAF losses for the claim times and places - not so much for most of LuftFlotte 3 and Reich.

US Bomber claims were simply utter nonsense for most of the war but the computing gun sights seemed to have helped close the gap.

I heavily researched both sides for March 6, 8, 16; April 8, 11, 13 19 22 24 and 29,;May 8 12 13 22 28 29 30 31; June 20, 21, 29; July 7, 28; August 3, 5, 6, 16, 18, 25; Sept 11, 12, 27; November 2, 21, 26; Dec 5, 25; Jan 1, 14; Feb 9, 23; Mar 1, 19, 24, 31; April 7, 8 21 for my 355th History to get a sense of AAF VC versus LW actual losses. I found the major category of variation was an 8th AF claim of 'destroyed' when a fighter crash landed w/o follow up strafing, whereas the LW might record Damaged <60% and therefore repaired.

[Juha]

I also noticed that in Caldwell JG 26 books but on the other hand the claim accuracy of the II./JG 2 against P-38s over Tunisia seems to have been definitely worse that that of other LW fighter units there.

On the British claim accuracy, never have studied that but I have seen Bader mentioned as one of the inaccurate claimers, true or not I cannot say.
Juha

[Nick Beale]

Originally Posted by Graham Boak

I wonder what a partisan historian of JG2 would have to say on the subject.

I don't think I'm partisan about them but while I./JG 2 were in Italy they claimed 52 victories. By my count, they actually got 20–25 Allied aircraft.

[Larry]

It's a hard task for any aviation historian not to become too ingratiated with the subject matter and believe all the accounts of pilots they may have interviewed or researched, as in a sense we all want to 'believe in' the unit we are researching and think it is the best.

[kettbo]

ok, I'm clear on this.
I'd love to see other German as well as RAF units researched and analyzed like Caldwell's works.
Sadly, time has marched on and the grim reaper has harvested most of the pilots.

Was hoping someone had closely examined some of the RAF scorers at this time/this place and had some insights. I just do not have names to put on the RAF to examine I order to research further in my spare time. The RAF's LIST OF ACES would have a new look to it