The confirmation of air victories of top Allied aces by LW sources?

[Juha]

Originally Posted by GuerraCivil

I think that the accuracy of claims is not irrelevant when trying to judge the effectiveness of air units, specially fighter units.

IMHO it didn't much matter if the kills were made by Smith or Jones/Hans or Jürgen, what mattered was the real results achieved by the units.

Originally Posted by GuerraCivil

When looking the stats of certain units, the "top scorers" make a substantial contribution - thus it has some importance. Inflated kill/loss -stats give wrong picture of airwar and can lead to wrong conclusions. The more inflated the air victory stats is the more false picture it gives about the efficiency of certain air units, certain tactics and certain strategy.

That is self-evident but what matters is the claim accuracy of the unit(s) not so much of the individual(s). And in the end it is the question how much the top brass believed the claims, if they didn't believe badly inflated claims those claims didn't have much effect on tactics etc.

Originally Posted by GuerraCivil

The RAF failed to achieve enough positive results in 1941-1942 with Circus operations and the actual kill/loss -stats were highly unfavourable for RAF - big numerical superiority did not bring the hoped air dominance over Western Europe. Effectively just two Luftwaffe regiments (JG 26 and JG 2) tied down much bigger enemy forces and managed to inflict them bigger losses than suffered themselves.

How much did the inflated RAF kill/loss -stats with these operations effect in the continuing somewhat dubious strategy and committing too many Spitfires in rather futile operations is very interesting question. Many Spitfires would have found better service outside of Britain much earlier like sending them to defend Malta and stregthening DAF in North Africa by late 1941/early 1942.

A bit more complicated than that, the main question was the grand strategy. Germany's central position allowed it to move units more rapidly than GB. So the main question for British was, could Germany knock out the SU out of the war or even simply stabilize the Eastern Front so that it could move most of the LW to the West maybe with some of the best Heer divs. In that case GB might well to loose the war if most of its Spits were in MTO. In war one should not lightly risk one's power base for gains in secondary sectors.

Juha

[Paul Thompson]

Originally Posted by Juha

A bit more complicated than that, the main question was the grand strategy. Germany's central position allowed it to move units more rapidly than GB. So the main question for British was, could Germany knock out the SU out of the war or even simply stabilize the Eastern Front so that it could move most of the LW to the West maybe with some of the best Heer divs. In that case GB might well to loose the war if most of its Spits were in MTO. In war one should not lightly risk one's power base for gains in secondary sectors.

Hello Juha,

The German advantage of interior lines was not as significant as it may appear. They did not have a significant merchant marine, even on internal seas like the Baltic, so they had to rely almost exclusively on railways for the transfer of large forces. The British were guilty of over-insurance for most of the war, after the shock of 1940. By mid-1941 they could easily have spared a dozen Spitfire squadrons for the Mediterranean without adversely affecting the strategic balance in the West, even if Soviet Union had collapsed by the end of the year. It would have been exceptionally difficult for the Germans to attempt an invasion in 1942, even with somewhat greater resources than in 1940.

Regards,

Paul

[Juha]

Originally Posted by Paul Thompson

Hello Juha,

The German advantage of interior lines was not as significant as it may appear. They did not have a significant merchant marine, even on internal seas like the Baltic, so they had to rely almost exclusively on railways for the transfer of large forces. The British were guilty of over-insurance for most of the war, after the shock of 1940. By mid-1941 they could easily have spared a dozen Spitfire squadrons for the Mediterranean without adversely affecting the strategic balance in the West, even if Soviet Union had collapsed by the end of the year. It would have been exceptionally difficult for the Germans to attempt an invasion in 1942, even with somewhat greater resources than in 1940.

Regards,

Paul

HelloPaul
yes, but their air units were fairly mobile, if you look how they were tossed from one sector to other. On the other hand GB could get their Spits back from MTO only by the sea, straight from Suez and then around the Cape of Good Hope or flown via Takoradi Road to Takoradi and shipped from there. And that would surely have taken significantly longer than a transfer five Geschwadern of fighters and 6 of bombers from East in spring of 1942. LW also had qualitive edge in fighter equipment at that time and Hurricane was clearly obsolent against 109F. I agree that it would have been possible to send some Spit sqns, maybe 6 -7, to MTO.

[Paul Thompson]

Originally Posted by Juha

HelloPaul
yes, but their air units were fairly mobile, if you look how they were tossed from one sector to other. On the other hand GB could get their Spits back from MTO only by the sea...

Hello Juha,

You are right to an extent, that the long naval route consumed a large amount of time. The key issue is that the RAF could afford to send 200 or more Spitfires to the Mediterranean in 1941 and never return any of them home, because of the superior production rates of British aviation industry. The British exaggerated the German threat by grossly over-estimating German production and effective strength, which had a very negative effect on the British war effort. By combining data on production, strength and losses of the RAF and Luftwaffe, it is possible to see that by 1941 'the game was up' for the Germans, unless they could rapidly defeat the USSR and rapidly exploit its industrial resources. This was possible, but Hitler and his henchmen did not see the nature of the problem with sufficient clarity. On the other hand, Churchill was very concerned about British political endurance and felt forced to tolerate the over-insurance endemic in so many Allied operations during the war.

Regards,

Paul

[Paul Thompson]

Originally Posted by GuerraCivil

The more inflated the air victory stats is the more false picture it gives about the efficiency of certain air units, certain tactics and certain strategy.

Hello GuerraCivil,

It has been well established in books such as Lundstrom’s that numbers of claims are in fact the least reliable of all the statistics produced by fighter units. The only way to analyse what you term the ‘efficiency’ of air forces or individual units is to look at the documents of their opponents and check statistics of aircraft and aircrew losses, the number of missions completed successfully and so on. This is best done at the strategic level, rather than for single units, because the success of a single unit did not necessarily have much significance for the war as a whole.

Originally Posted by GuerraCivil

The RAF failed to achieve enough positive results in 1941-1942 with Circus operations and the actual kill/loss -stats were highly unfavourable for RAF - big numerical superiority did not bring the hoped air dominance over Western Europe.

Conflating the raw numbers of losses with operational success is misleading. The RAF tied down and inflicted significant attrition on the two best Luftwaffe Jagdgeschwader at a time when the Geremans needed as manmy fighters as possible in the other theatres.

Originally Posted by GuerraCivil

How much did the inflated RAF kill/loss -stats with these operations effect in the continuing somewhat dubious strategy and committing too many Spitfires in rather futile operations is very interesting question. Many Spitfires would have found better service outside of Britain much earlier like sending them to defend Malta and stregthening DAF in North Africa by late 1941/early 1942.

The main reason for the cross-Channel operations was the perceived need to maintain pressure on the Germans and appease Stalin’s ever more vicious demands for a second front, numbers of claims played very little role in the strategic decisions made. You are correct on the subject of greater utility of Spitfires elsewhere, the problem in the Mediterranean and Malaya was that the British over-estimated the fighting power of their land forces and partly the Royal Navy too. As a result, the RAF had to carry a very high burden in these theatres.

Regards,

Paul

[James A Pratt III]

RAF night aces claims that are mostly accurate:
JRD Braham
John Cunningham
RP Steven

[GuerraCivil]

Not big strategical significance for the WW2 but just curious "female interest" of mine: has there been any serious studies to verify the air victory claims of Lydia Lytviak and Yekaterina Budanova?

The wiki has something about Lytviak & Budanova and states that they indeed made it an "ace" but that is just wiki.

To my knowledge the two top Allied female pilots when it came to shoot down German planes (and also the only known female aces in the history of airwar).

Were there any other female pilots with confirmed/verified air victories than the two above?

[Broncazonk]

Originally Posted by GuerraCivil

[...] has there been any serious studies to verify the air victory claims of Lydia Lytviak and Yekaterina Budanova? Were there any other female pilots with confirmed/verified air victories than the two above?

!! If you get off-list replies to this, will you please post them? You have raised important and interesting questions.

Bronc

[Paul Thompson]

Originally Posted by Broncazonk

!! If you get off-list replies to this, will you please post them? You have raised important and interesting questions.

Bronc

Hello Bronc,

There are two links, in Czech, on this subject. One is a brief article which review the history of the all-female 586 IAP (fighter aviation regiment). It was co-written by Vitaly Gorbach, a very capable Russian archival researcher and historian of the air battle of Kursk, and Dmitry Khazanov, a well-known author of books and articles on Soviet aviation. The third author, Poluninova, is unknown to me, but may be a female unit veteran.

See link - http://en.valka.cz/topic/view/24834#209526

There is also a list of female pilots who made claims - http://aces.safarikovi.org/victories/sssr-female.html

Regards,

Paul

[Maxim1]

Originally Posted by GuerraCivil

The wiki has something about Lytviak & Budanova and states that they indeed made it an "ace" but that is just wiki.

Budanova did not "made it an ace", because she isn't mentioned in Mikhail Bykov's books.

Lidiya Litviak had 5+3 (+1 balloon) victories in 138 combat missions:

13.09.1942 Ju-88 west of Gumrak ('shared')
27.09.1942 Ju-88 Stalingrad
27.09.1942 Bf-109 Stalingrad ('shared')
11.02.1943 Bf-109 Vesyoly (Весёлый)
22.03.1943 Ju-88 Chaltyr-Sinyavka
05.05.1943 Bf-109 south of Stalino
31.05.1943 Balloon Kondakovka
19.07.1943 Bf-109 Pervomayskoye
31.07.1943 Bf-109 west of Petrovsky ('shared')