Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?

[Christer Bergström]

Last our researches in Russia give us the ratio from 1:2 to 1:5...6 for the LW

I'm sorry, Mikhail, but I don't quite understand this.

Due to Krivosheyev, the USSR lost a total of 46,100 aircraft in combat between 22 June 1941 and 10 May 1945.

Due to Gemeinschaft der Jagdflieger, the German fighter pilots were credited with around 45,000 aerial victories on the Eastern Front 1941 - 1945. Then we have the claims made by AAA and ground troops, who also made overclaims.

Due to the same source, the Luftwaffenflak (AAA) reported its 20,000th victory in October 1944. However, at the same time, the USAAF recorded that 7,821 of its aircraft were shot down by enemy AAA in the European and Mediterranean combat zones 1942 - 1945, and I would guess that at least 5,000 aircraft of other Allied air forces (excluding the Soviet) were lost to German AAA, bringing the total to perhaps at least 12,000. Knowing that a number of Soviet aircraft were also shot down by Army ground fire, let's assume that German ground fire claimed 10,000 Soviet aircraft shot down.

If we add those approximately 10,000 "ground fire victories" to the 45,000 fighter victories, we get a total of 55,000.

Where are the margins for a 1:2 to 1:5...6 overclaims ratio when we know that the Soviets lost 46,100 aircraft (due to Krivosheyev)? Such an overclaims ratio seems to point at an actual number of only something like 16,000 Soviet aircraft shot down by German forces. So which were the reasons to all the other maybe 30,000 Soviet aircraft combat losses?

Also, regarding overclaims made by the Western Allies, I can agree that RAF overclaims generally were high, as often was the case regarding those by the American fighter pilots in the Mediterranean. However, many years of research has led me to conclude that hardly any fighter pilots on average submitted aerial victory claims with greater accuracy than the fighter pilots of the 8th USAAF. The ratio between victory claims and actual Luftwaffe losses is close to 1:1 for the 8th USAAF fighter pilots.