Luftwaffe Procedure Claim in Eastern Front

[Nikita Egorov]

I should say most of Barkhorn's and Rall's claims could be verified with Soviet losses, contrary to Hartmann, who sometimes could "found" Soviet planes where they were not presented.
Talking about German overclaims I could add IMHO another signifficant factor, that is "neck itching" and race for magic number, such as 100, 150, 200 and so markings. Some of German fighters were contaminated with this decease vastly, while others fixed the immunity ones and for all.

Originally Posted by Laurent Rizzotti

This issue has been debated many times. Comparing Allied and German scores is non-sense because they flew in completly different environments.


In the end, I think that the usual overclaiming percentage (30-40% is the usual ratio) should probably be applied to the German aces scores. So Hartmann probably shot down between 200-250 AC, Barkhorn and Rall around 200 and so on.

The next possible step would be to estimate the probable score by adding all enemy losses in battle where Hartmann get involved and compare them to all German claims. So if 800 losses correspong to 1200 German claims, you can give an estimate "reality ratio" of 2/3 for each victory.