Jagdflieger unconfirmed victories and official confirmation of claims

[Boris Ciglic]

Figures for April 1941:
at least 61 claim for 47 shot down, 7 severely damaged, 2 slightly damaged and an Fi 156 forced to land although undamaged. Of these 61, at least 3 claims remained unconfirmed although in each of these cases Yugoslav aircraft was actually shot down.

[marsyao]

Originally Posted by Boris Ciglic

Figures for April 1941:
at least 61 claim for 47 shot down, 7 severely damaged, 2 slightly damaged and an Fi 156 forced to land although undamaged. Of these 61, at least 3 claims remained unconfirmed although in each of these cases Yugoslav aircraft was actually shot down.

hi, Boris, one of important reason for overclaim was misjudge the damaged enemy aircrafts for those shoting down, and for different time and different theatre, the accuracy of claims could be vastly different even for the same units.
Besides, are you sure those none of those Yugoslavia aircrafts were shot down by ground fire or shot down by Italian ?

[Boris Ciglic]

These are figures for actions against the Luftwaffe, aircraft claimed/lost in action against the Italians are separated from this total and not included here. As for the AA claims, just a few (but only few) of these 47 could have fallen to flak instead of fighters.

[Marius]

Denes,

you are completely right! Generalization is a very bad thing. And it seems some people are reading the "wrong books".

It is just not true Luftwaffe oveclaimed during the whole war 2:1 or even 3:1. Maybe it was so in 1944-45, but not at the beginning of the war.

I think the years 1939 and 1940 - until the end of French campaign, were rather accurate. In 1939 appr. 80-90% of German claims are confirmed by known Polish total losses. This is much better than 2:1. And we do not know some Polish losses due to lack of documents. I think the French campaign will be similar.
The Battle over Britain will be different to much causes (channel, lack of fuel, more participating aircraft on both sides and so on...).

Regards,
Marius

[Juha]

I agree with what Nikita Egorov wrote in reply 11. Of course with a strict debriefing system one could improve claim accuracy markedly as USN did, was that from 1943 onwards. Also RAF could markedly improve its claim accuracy when it finally decided to tackle the overclaiming problem. IMHO on the long run the knowledge that a confirmation system is lax would decline claim accuracy because many of good fighter pilots were very competitive and if they noticed that others got their claims accepted lightly and got medals and promotions because of that the temptation to do same was strong. Of course some would not fall to temptation because of theit integrity or because they didn't care were they 6th or 24th in the ranking list. They just wanted to do they job propertly and got they satisfaction from that and from the successes of their unit. IMHO a figter unit was in this sense an organization as any other, there were primadonnas and there were those who cared mostly the overall performance plus of course those who did their duty but not much else and so on.

[Franek Grabowski]

Well, German claims (or rather veirfied victories - there is a difference) were more-less accurate only when the wrecks were counted. That is why kills in Poland, France, Yugoslavia were closer to the actual enemy losses than in the Battle of Britain or in Normandy.
Otherwise, verification of claims was only a morale boosting process and of no other great value but perhaps some assesment of training and armament.

[wrackplatz]

Originally Posted by Franek Grabowski

Otherwise, verification of claims was only a morale boosting process and of no other great value but perhaps some assesment of training and armament.

The denial of own losses is propaganda too to calm down
the own pilots, soldiers, civil population...

[Nikita Egorov]

Originally Posted by wrackplatz

The denial of own losses is propaganda too to calm down
the own pilots, soldiers, civil population...

I wonder which side in your opinion denied own losses?

[Jens]

I have done some research about Kursk air battle and my estimations were as follow:
1. German fighters overclaim 1:3 but if Flak is considered in all ways even higher.
2. Soviet fighters overclaim 1:8 up to 1:10.

Reasons for this quotas.
1.
-In July 1943 no more any eyewitnesses were needed in Luftwaffe. Claims were confirmed "unter Vorbehalt". (source Aders/Held JG-51)
-Flak also claimed a great a amount. But theres is to consider not only Luftwaffe Flak but also Heeres Flak which isn't counted at Luftwaffe documents. Alone one Panzerkorps at Kursk claimed 10% of all soviet air losses.
2. For the soviet side i haven't any reasons for this quotas found. Maybe LW documents are not correct, since they show quite different figures and also german POW said other figures.

[kalender1973]

Originally Posted by Jens

I have done some research about Kursk air battle and my estimations were as follow:
1. German fighters overclaim 1:3 but if Flak is considered in all ways even higher.
2. Soviet fighters overclaim 1:8 up to 1:10.

2. For the soviet side i haven't any reasons for this quotas found. Maybe LW documents are not correct, since they show quite different figures and also german POW said other figures.

I think, here is two main points, why VVS has higher overclaims rates as the other(beside the assumtion, that LW documents is not full)

First, the high own losses forced the regiment commander and other pilot claims highest possible LW losses, otherwise they could have problem with their higher commanders(own losses w/o own success never look well)

And the second, if we say, that VVS at that time has many young inexpierience pilot, they could not really say, if enemy plane was really shot down. The correct result evaluation of the shooting and fight(and the fights was very hard), belongs to the pilot skills, as well the start and landings.