15 April - first P-47 kill in ETO - confirmed, or not?

[Six Nifty .50s]

Originally Posted by Ruy Horta

The Most Controversial Case of Inflated Victories at Sea

By who's authority, yours? First you cannot bring up any hard numbers for German claims, second why bring this up in the first place?

I brought it up because, at this time, Tony Wood seems to have the best available information on the total number of German pilot claims, whether officially sanctioned or not.

Originally Posted by Ruy Horta

Isn't this about an early USAAF claim?

Is it? Franek made a remark about inflated claims over water as a general occurrence -- and Reno asked for more information.

Originally Posted by Ruy Horta

Also it isn't about absolute numbers, but about relative ones?

Relative to what?

Originally Posted by Ruy Horta

In your assumed case it is a 4:1 overclaim, are your sure this is really is The Most Controversial Case of Inflated Victories at Sea?

I would say so. One of your forum readers (Don Caldwell) said that the large discrepancy between Luftwaffe claims and RAF losses led to a prolonged controversy between German and British historians. That is a very interesting observation because this mission was a small-scale bombing raid by World War II standards, and yet military aviation writers chose to argue about it for some time.