Jagdflieger unconfirmed victories and official confirmation of claims

[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