Bueligens P-38 kills, disputed

[alessandro bray]

Hi to all,

the discussion on relationship between claims and real losses is always fashinating and complex.
Here I prefer to skip the confrontation between Luftwaffe and other aviations claims – in parenthesis I consider Luftwaffe claims on average more accurate – in the case of Bühligen’s P-38 claims a good work is “ FW 190 in North Afrika”. Can be interesting to compare Spitfire and P-38 claims and the fact that Spitfire’s are more accurate is maybe another step in favour of incomplete US data, if too overclaim is evident.
Come back to Abschüsse on western front 1941-1943 and examining the JG 2 and JG26 claims, the latter are very close to allied real losses, it is sufficient to compare days when only one of the two JG scored and this is the result. With this, I don’t think the whole JG2 overclaimed, some pilots, like Egon Mayer or Bruno Stolle, or some units, like 8./JG2 whose activities around Brest are simpler to compare with allied losses, are pretty accurate (in the period September 1942-april 1943 this staffel claimed 29 spitfire and I find 26 losses from RAF squadron in exact time and locations); other cases, like Siegried Schnell or the Stab seemed to have often very overclaimed

alessandro Bray