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.

[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

[Icare9]

Bit of overkill on the quotes, Laurent old boy.
Suggest you try practising a little harder on your sarcasm, it doesn't translate well
Amities

[Nick Beale]

Originally Posted by Icare9

Bit of overkill on the quotes, Laurent old boy.
Suggest you try practising a little harder on your sarcasm, it doesn't translate well
Amities

If you have a problem with anything said on this forum, then either report the post or send a personal message to a moderator: Ruy Horta, John Beaman or me.

[Peter Cornwell]

Fair enough Nick. But I do hope that a little light banter between forum members (provided that it doesn't 'cross the line') will not prove grounds for immediate intervention by a moderator in future. Icare9 sparked what may have developed into a healthy and robust debate and I'm sure that most of us ladies are well able to survive the occasional contrary view being expressed. But I do accept, most readily, that simply personal comments are not acceptable - hence your timely reminder.

[David Ransome]

I thought that Laurent's reply was okay and in fact reduced what could have been a lengthy response to a shorter one, and I didn't read it as being sarcastic either. He was just reinforcing what most comms in this thread have been suggesting as obvious.

Tally ho!

[John Vasco]

Agreed, David. I didn't see Laurent's post as sarcastic, rather it was informative.

What Icare does not appear to grasp is that a hell of a lot of work on exactly that kind of thing has already taken place, as evidenced by several of the posts above, mine included. It seems obvious that he is not conversant with many published sources. What he definitely needs to understand is that the degree of overclaiming militates against total accuracy in a lot of cases.

[Jim P.]

Amen to Nick, Peter, David & John. Laurent's response was spot on - there are no absolutes in trying to decipher these air battles, or most others for that matter. To expect complete certainty with the who nailed who is rather naive.