Battle of Britain - who shot what down?

[Laurent Rizzotti]

Originally Posted by Icare9

Is there already any definitive work that has examined each days action and established who shot what down?

You really except to have a DEFINITIVE work about such a long and controversial thing as the Battle of Britain ????

Especially on the who shot down what matter: in the BoB period you are speaking of thousand of victory claims, sometimes in very confused battles.

Originally Posted by Icare9

It seems to me that this is one area that hasn't been exhaustively researched, not least because of the uncertainty when say a German pilot shot down a British aircraft but in turn was shot down himself, there wouldn't necessarily be any way of accrediting that in the melee of a dogfight..

Actually my own opinion is that the Battle of Britain is one of the most researched timeframes of WWII, and many authors have tried to determine who shot down what. AFAIK the first published attempt was the classic (and now outdated) "Battle of Britain" book by Mr Mason, in 1969.

Originally Posted by Icare9

However, this many years later we can establish what pilots took off from each side and who returned, so whilst it may not be possible to attribute a loss to a specific pilot, but perhaps to a likely unit.

If you are able now to establish who participated in each battle, you have a lot of data that many people on this board will like to have. The data might be available for the RAF side on most actions, but is certainly lacking for most Luftwaffe units. And air battles usually need two sides to be fought (except friendly fire incidents, but these are not always recorded in official documents).

Originally Posted by Icare9

Has this already been done, or is this an area that both the Allied and the Luftwaffe board experts can work on?

This has already been done, but is still an area that both the Allied and the Luftwaffe board experts can work on, and are working on.

I am myself waiting impatiently for the result of the EoE project, that has probably gathered more sources, documents and data about the subject that anyone else before.

Best regards

Laurent