Hans Hahn

[Nick Hector]

Thanks Andy,

Do you know if the Coastal Command Losses vol 2 is anywhere on the horizon? That would put these losses out into the public domain

Nick

[Nick Hector]

Originally Posted by Johannes

Hi Nick

It's a delicate subject "over-claiming".

Hi Johannes,

What makes it delicate is when we use words like "dishonest" and so on. What makes it delicate is failing to back up words like that when we use them...

Nick

[christian]

Hi

In a diary i found some informations for the 30. Dezember 1942. A verry great number (hunderte!) of russian planes come over the front and attacket the places of the Luftwaffe. The JG 54 have 45 claims, only one loss. Hptm. Philipp has 8 claims, Lt. Stotz 10 claims.

Christian

[GMichalski]

Hi,

good work,

as colleague of both, Nick and Johannes i understand, your opinions and
info...
but i think there is a gap of info in his Russian losses to have a
true face of this pilot. If someone brings more information we will know
if was more exagerated that in the channel...or not


the bad/good reputation of a pilot sometimes change with new more info or not

regards

[Johannes]

Hi

In my opinion claiming was more honest in the West, this is due to the Luftwaffe having more scope to examine crash-sites, and generally larger Luftwaffe formations. I guess the units C.O makes a difference also......Adolf Galland a very honest claimer seemed to have kept a tight reign on his pilots, he was followed by Priller another very honest pilot as leader of JG 26. In my opinion all the units in the med(except JG 2 during it's brief stay in Africa) were an honest bunch i.e JG 27, JG 53.
In Russia the pilots of JG 5 seemed to believe they were abandoned with inferior aircraft, and their air-battles were usually over the sea(as per JG 2 in the West). Usually in the East combat was behind enemy lines, so less scope for investigation, and it seems there were always dishonest and honest claimers within units.....over-claimers sometimes is too light a word for it. We all know of the four JG 27 pilots caught firing-off their ammunition over the African desert, and claiming large numbers of "kills", but reported doing so by a lost comrade who happened upon them.
The Luftwaffe method of reporting claims was very rigorous, you couldn't "over-claim" without help......being an officer helped, classic i'll scratch your back, you scratch mine would be Rudorffer/Tangermann.
Generally JG 51 and JG 77 in my opinion were the most accurate claimers(again perhaps leaders helped i.e Vatti Molders).
Sometimes authors print(which is cast in stone) doesn't help. Walter-Franz Woidich springs to mind, we were always told 110 confirmed claims, and we had the dates, but Woidich himself has the last twenty-eight of these over Russian missing from his abschüße list i.e somebody made it up, and it stuck!, and this guy was a honest claimer, it's difficult now to convince enthusiasts now that his total is 82 not 110 ! same with Walter Schuck his total of 206 is based only on the pilots statement that Hermann Goring told him that twenty-five of his previously unconfirmed claims had(by some miracle it would seem) all been confirmed, therefore his total is 181.

Often a pilot transferred West with a large number of claims, doesn't make any in the West, for it was more difficult do actually do, and the scope for "over-claiming" is less.

So it was easier in the East.......if, and a big if you wanted to do it.

Kind Regards

Johannes

[Nick Beale]

In my opinion all the units in the med(except JG 2 during it's brief stay in Africa) were an honest bunch

In Italy (February–April 1944) I./JG 2 made 52 claims. In those actions the Allies lost 20–25 aircraft, so they may have been honest (if you accept that 2:1 overclaiming was about normal for fighter pilots) but even so they weren't very accurate.

[Andy Fletcher]

Originally Posted by Nick Hector

Thanks Andy,

Do you know if the Coastal Command Losses vol 2 is anywhere on the horizon? That would put these losses out into the public domain

Nick

Hi Nick,

I seem to recall Ross saying in the past that the manuscript was submitted to the publisher years ago but they are sitting on it, and he is contractually obliged to publish through them.

Best Regards

Andy Fletcher

[Juha]

Hello Nick Beale thanks for the interesting piece of info on I./JG 2.

On the JG 2 generally (and MTO)
IMHO Mark R. / Mark J. Reardon’s message #4 on 7th April 2011 14:32 for the actual research on the USAAF reported P-38 losses and the LW P-38 claims during the Tunisia Campaign and Rob Romero’s #25 on 20th April 2011, 20:24 for the stats calculated from it give a good indication of the variation of claim accuracy of different units.

see: http://forum.12oclockhigh.net/showthread.php?t=24947

Rob’s main result were
JG 51 19/25: 76.0%
JG 27 -2/-3: 66.7%
JG 53 19/29: 65.5%
JG 77 -7/11: 63.6%
JG 2 -5/22: 22.7%

the sample of JG 27 is very small but IMHO generally LW claims were at that time and area very accurate, those of JG 51 almost exceptionally accurate but again JG 2 was an exception, overclaiming badly.

[Alfred.MONZAT]

Originally Posted by Andy Fletcher

I seem to recall Ross saying in the past that the manuscript was submitted to the publisher years ago but they are sitting on it, and he is contractually obliged to publish through them.

Disgusting...

[Nick Hector]

Originally Posted by Alfred.MONZAT

Disgusting...

Totally agree. What about the Bomber Losses in the Middle East and Mediterranean vol 2? Is it the same story?

Nick