Italian aircraft and their top aces

[PMoz99]

Thank you for the details Juha.
Yes, I understand that claims with lack of witnesses are sometimes accepted, and at times circumstances can be such that there are or can be no witnesses. But if there is no witness and there is no other confirmation, then we are left with a probable. Depending on the pilot, some might be less probable than others (Welter and some others spring to mind here). I would imagine when you are in a melee, you only get split seconds to gain an impression on how much damage your hits have caused, and you probably haven't got the time or space to watch what happens after that. But simple things like a Me109 making lots of black smoke when under full power convinced many Brits they'd scored a kill.
My general impression is that the Finns were pretty reliable, so I would have little difficulty in accepting most or all the probables are actual victories.
Thanks again for all your time and information!
Peter

[Juha]

Hello Peter

Originally Posted by PMoz99

... Depending on the pilot, some might be less probable than others ...

Yes, that is true IMHO in all AFs. With diffferent confirmation systems one can get better reliability but all systems are man-made and so can be circumvented by a man. Also culture played its part but in the end its up to the individual

Originally Posted by PMoz99

... My general impression is that the Finns were pretty reliable...

We might have been fairly reliable but we also had our "problem children".

Juha

[PMoz99]

Interesting. Regarding the suspected 'problem children', in the top 15 or so are they possibly those with a large proportion of probables? Lehtovaara, Tuominen, even Juutilainen?
The Aces information I have lists, in some cases, victories from various sources. I haven't noticed any large fluctuations in the numbers from those various sources - that is, they all appear to come up with a very similar total.
Cheers
Peter