Battle of Britain - who shot what down?

[Peter Cornwell]

Originally Posted by Icare9

It seems to me that this is one area that hasn't been exhaustively researched ...

I had rather expected to find that there was already a large body of research, but despite being a familiar here I haven't found anything than individual sets of reports, not as a collective whole.

I was asking if there was a level of research to establish who shot down whom ...

One body of research such as you expected to find may be my own. I work with it most days as it is constantly being updated, revised, and enhanced as further information comes to hand. Over the years it has formed the basis for several loss lists published in various authors' books and is currently being further developed for the EOE project as Larry Hickey has indicated. But 'cherry-picking' individual cases to examine is no way forward in my experience. A gestalt approach has to be adopted to the events of any day and one needs to be satisfied that the losses are both accurate and complete before any attempt is made to relate them to specific claims. Hence, as has been already pointed out by others here, it is costly, time-consuming, demanding, and frustrating work. Frankly, it is often about as much fun as sucking the farts out of dead cats (apologies) for any significant change resulting from fresh information can bring down your careful construct of a day's events and lead to a complete reappraisal. So, the subject may not have been exhaustively researched but that is how it often leaves me.