Barkhorn: claims vs. victories

[HGabor]

Good question, but I have no idea. Personally I always trust the official loss-reports more (issued by their owners, regardless of their side) than any reported claims, filed by the opponent side after the mission, having zero responsibility on the loss. Any side, losing a plane had the responsibility for:

1., Report the loss of the plane and the loss of their pilot in different channels, even if the pilot returned healthy in just a few days. Simply, because eg. he could not be scheduled for the next mission of the day, or the next day.

2., They also had to report the loss to the families of the MIA/KIA airmen, and the change in their maintenance, refill, etc. tasks of the day for the ground crews,

3., they had to request new, replacement planes from the factories / Air Army distribution centres to maintain the combat value of their unit.

4., they had to request new, replacement pilots from the training units.

So it was much-much more complicated and difficult to play tricks with the losses than with the claims. But since the soviet reports match the claims of many other Luftwaffe pilots very well, to me it is obvious that the problem was with some individual Luftwaffe pilots' reports/claims, not with the reported losses. But unfortunately I cannot tell you what and how..

Gabor