Severe Overclaimers Vs. Reliable Claimers List -4 Nov 07 Update

[Juha]

In principle I agree with Rob. It should be possible to have some sort of rough estimate of claim accuracy of pilots. If not otherwise then to show due respects to those reliable claimers who have been put to background by their more “optimistic” comrades. But it must be remember that there will be much uncertainty in results and the reasons of overclaiming varied. For example those who participated in many big dogfights would suffer without their own reason. Good self-confidence was essential to good fighter pilot and if many of them overestimated effects of their shooting that’s not so bad. It’s a different thing with those who because of their vanity or because of urge for promotions, rewards or publicity knowingly doll up their score. But the motives of a man are very difficult to gauge so it’s very difficult to weed out those latter from those who genuine believed that their claims were true. So we must be careful with our conclusions.

First of all I’d take off Hartmann from the top of your list of Alleged Heavy Overclaimers. Not because that I have some special respects on Hartmann’s claim accuracy but because you have yourself put the research of Khazanov in “”. My advice is that you put on top of that list those on whose overclaims you have more positive proofs than a “research”.

With respect
Juha