From Barbarossa to Odessa (Luftwaffe Strikes Pt 1)

[Franek Grabowski]

Originally Posted by Jim Oxley

Don't you think that's a surprisingly harsh statement? In effect you are calling Pokryshkin a liar.

Well, it looks like I do, but all the credit should go to Mikhail Bykov, who get through tons of documents of various levels of Soviet command and verified score of Pokryshkin, providing dates of all known his kills. It turned out Pokryshkin is not second highest scoring Soviet ace, not even a third one, but placing somewhere at the end of the first 10. There is also a history that he has stolen some kills from Rechkalov, so I think it looks indeed very harsh.
All I can say is that FBTO is based on most recent research, and the other book should not be considered reliable, at least in this respect.