Stepan Ivanovich Kretov - Il-4 ace

Hello Gabor.
Has anyone ever bothered to try to check how accurate the records are? It's easy for all to say the pilots are overclaimers, but what about the records themselves? Have they been falsified or doctored to avoid reprimand or whatever?

I mean, a simple reconciliation of -

Total Aircraft at start + Lendlease + Built New - Total Aircraft left at end = Total Losses.

One could then compare losses per the available records with this figure to determine their accuracy. For research into claims to be valid, the numbers really need to balance.

If the numbers don't balance then you rally can't say anything at all about the claims, because the documents you base your research on are inaccurate, which, of course, leads to unreliable/irrelevant conclusions.

For example, if the reconciliation shows hundreds or thousands of losses unaccounted for, who is to say how they occurred? Do you just ignore the imbalance?

Marcus