WWII Victory Claims

It’s certainly true you can’t compare claims apples to apples across a/c types, air arms and periods as if they all represent the same level of real damage done to the enemy, they don’t.

And it’s true the bomber gunner claims were sytematically less accurate than fighter claims, especially bombers in big formations because it was impossible to accurately deconflict duplicated claims, plus a bomber could not stick with its target to assure and see destruction. OTOH the morale effect of crediting claims was an opposing consideration. Even war time intel assumed that fighter losses to US bombers were around 25% of claims (a number hard to verify, some celebrated cases were much worse, but some of those have been misreported as worse than they were, other cases were are high as 1/3 accurate, but it’s in the apparent ballpark). But that wasn’t just true of US bombers, they just operated on a very large scale in daylight compared to other AF’s.

However I don’t agree that German day fighters were sytematically high overclaimers. In some periods they were, especially late in the war, but for much of the war LW day fighters seem to claimed more accurately than the air arms they faced. The RAF claimed more accurately late in the war, but overclaimed at a considerable rate at certain times earlier. See the discussion in Foreman “Fighter Command Diaries” for example about the ‘circuses’ over France ca. 41-42. It was known from Ultra that the credited claims were out of line with German fighter losses several to one, as German records also reflected postwar, German claims were considerably more accurate in those combats, a situation different than BoB. Likewise Mediterranean, see for example Cull et al “Air War over Yugoslavia, Crete and Greece” RAF fighter claims and those of the Italians against them were about equally and pretty highly, overstated. Against the Japanese early in the Pacific War again US and Brit claims were roughly similarly and seriously overstated while the Japanese had the upper hand; in that period the notorious Japanese overclaims were not always worse than Allied. Again, later on British (and US and other Western) fighter claiming got more accurate while Axis claiming got worse. You can’t make an (accurate) single statement that this air arm claimed more accurately always than that one, even for one type a/c.

It’s harder to evaluate individual scores; the general situation is the ace in question and a bunch of other friendlies make claims; the total recorded losses of the enemy are less than that total. Who scored what? Sympathetic analysis of the ace will often give the ace ‘first dibs’ on whatever victories the opposing records ‘make available’ but that distorts the probably real situation by assuming the ace was a more accurate claimer than his comrades. Your thesis that he tended to be less so might be true, but it’s hard to prove either way. One example is Marseille; his accuracy is feasible to see, often small combats, in eg. Shores “Fighters Over the Desert” and was pretty good. The day he claimed 17 Allied fighters, the WWII record, he seems to have downed fewer but not many fewer. In general many German super scores were amassed in periods where their claiming can be seen to have been pretty accurate overall (eg. in East). It stands to reason many of the real scores of those pilots, though still in all probably less than they were credited with, were still very high compared to Western Allied aces’ ‘real’ scores.

This is a huge topic, I don’t think it’s practical to give one list of sources. I think we’d have to focus on a particular period/theater. But again, just tallying the total claims by type doesn’t tell you much, I agree.

Joe

Thanks Joe very interesting and informative.

The more that one thinks about the more complex it gets – as even in a theatre at a particular time the accuracy of claims can vary hugely between units. If I may stick with my BoB analogy, as this has been analysed to death, it is a matter of fact that 12 Group’s ‘Big Wings’ overclaimed far more excessively (without looking it up, a factor of three times worse comes to mind) than did 11 Group as a whole, and there were variations in overclaiming from squadron to squadron. But then I think this is what you are saying…

As someone who some say has made a career out of being professionally cynical, I instinctively distrust “showman aces” who seem to regard war as an opportunity to project themselves. I am sure that if one looked in detail at the most famous aces then not all of their records would stand up to critical scrutiny. I particularly distrust Luftwaffe scores because, as has been pointed out by those far more erudite than me in the past, their promotion and medal award systems positively encouraged overclaiming.

But coming back to the main thread, I find it hard to see how the Bf 109 is not the highest scoring plane in history, even if one knocks its number of credited kills back hugely for overclaiming – all those sitting targets on the Eastern Front….

G’ day

Interesting stuff dude’s 😉 .

That would be a pretty hard task to work out 😮

But I am sure some Planeinsane warbirdnutter nerd :rolleyes: will sit down and try and work out the number’s.

Your request might just start one of the nerd’s on such a mission, ya never know 😀 .

Ooooo Roooo

Croc’s Rule!!:dev2:

Also – the kill per sortie ratio was pretty even over all the airforces for the top pilots, just remember the axis pilots weren’t rotated out of the line like the “allied” pilots – they stayed to the bitter end – with high scores and, most of them dead.

This just highlights the issue of overclaiming, which was as we all know pretty endemic in WW2; however, the two examples that you quote are those where the practice has always seemed me most extreme (Luftwaffe day fighter pilots and US bomber air gunners).

One suspects that the problem that those who sought to achieve star status were the worst offenders – can anyone point me to a well researched work that compares the claims of people like Galland, Molders, Bader, Stanford-Tuck, et al with that damage that they actually did based on study of the “other side’s” records?

It’s certainly true you can’t compare claims apples to apples across a/c types, air arms and periods as if they all represent the same level of real damage done to the enemy, they don’t.

And it’s true the bomber gunner claims were sytematically less accurate than fighter claims, especially bombers in big formations because it was impossible to accurately deconflict duplicated claims, plus a bomber could not stick with its target to assure and see destruction. OTOH the morale effect of crediting claims was an opposing consideration. Even war time intel assumed that fighter losses to US bombers were around 25% of claims (a number hard to verify, some celebrated cases were much worse, but some of those have been misreported as worse than they were, other cases were are high as 1/3 accurate, but it’s in the apparent ballpark). But that wasn’t just true of US bombers, they just operated on a very large scale in daylight compared to other AF’s.

However I don’t agree that German day fighters were sytematically high overclaimers. In some periods they were, especially late in the war, but for much of the war LW day fighters seem to claimed more accurately than the air arms they faced. The RAF claimed more accurately late in the war, but overclaimed at a considerable rate at certain times earlier. See the discussion in Foreman “Fighter Command Diaries” for example about the ‘circuses’ over France ca. 41-42. It was known from Ultra that the credited claims were out of line with German fighter losses several to one, as German records also reflected postwar, German claims were considerably more accurate in those combats, a situation different than BoB. Likewise Mediterranean, see for example Cull et al “Air War over Yugoslavia, Crete and Greece” RAF fighter claims and those of the Italians against them were about equally and pretty highly, overstated. Against the Japanese early in the Pacific War again US and Brit claims were roughly similarly and seriously overstated while the Japanese had the upper hand; in that period the notorious Japanese overclaims were not always worse than Allied. Again, later on British (and US and other Western) fighter claiming got more accurate while Axis claiming got worse. You can’t make an (accurate) single statement that this air arm claimed more accurately always than that one, even for one type a/c.

It’s harder to evaluate individual scores; the general situation is the ace in question and a bunch of other friendlies make claims; the total recorded losses of the enemy are less than that total. Who scored what? Sympathetic analysis of the ace will often give the ace ‘first dibs’ on whatever victories the opposing records ‘make available’ but that distorts the probably real situation by assuming the ace was a more accurate claimer than his comrades. Your thesis that he tended to be less so might be true, but it’s hard to prove either way. One example is Marseille; his accuracy is feasible to see, often small combats, in eg. Shores “Fighters Over the Desert” and was pretty good. The day he claimed 17 Allied fighters, the WWII record, he seems to have downed fewer but not many fewer. In general many German super scores were amassed in periods where their claiming can be seen to have been pretty accurate overall (eg. in East). It stands to reason many of the real scores of those pilots, though still in all probably less than they were credited with, were still very high compared to Western Allied aces’ ‘real’ scores.

This is a huge topic, I don’t think it’s practical to give one list of sources. I think we’d have to focus on a particular period/theater. But again, just tallying the total claims by type doesn’t tell you much, I agree.

Joe

I should think that the top scoring aircraft overall through out the war ought to be the Bf-109, bearing in mind the amount of action it saw in all 6 years of the wars – especially on the Eastern front.

I faintly recall reading many years ago, that the top scoring aircraft (shooting down the largest No. of enemy aircraft) of the allies wasn’t a fighter at all, but was in fact the B-17 Flying Fortress!:confused:

This just highlights the issue of overclaiming, which was as we all know pretty endemic in WW2; however, the two examples that you quote are those where the practice has always seemed me most extreme (Luftwaffe day fighter pilots and US bomber air gunners). To get realistic figures one would need to get a handle on the extent of over-claiming by service and by front and then factor the numbers down accordingly.

I remember reading in Bungay’s excellent The Most Dangerous Enemy the account of how one of the German top aces was allowed his claim of three kills after one sortie in the BoB despite the armourers finding that his guns had never even been fired (strange however that Bungay does not identify him). One suspects that the problem that those who sought to achieve star status were the worst offenders – can anyone point me to a well researched work that compares the claims of people like Galland, Molders, Bader, Stanford-Tuck, et al with that damage that they actually did based on study of the “other side’s” records?

Does anybody have some good information, or web sites, that has a list of victory claims by aircraft type?

Thanks
Carey

I should think that the top scoring aircraft overall through out the war ought to be the Bf-109, bearing in mind the amount of action it saw in all 6 years of the wars – especially on the Eastern front.

I faintly recall reading many years ago, that the top scoring aircraft (shooting down the largest No. of enemy aircraft) of the allies wasn’t a fighter at all, but was in fact the B-17 Flying Fortress!:confused: