It might be that verifying the shoot-down with the intelligence officer was more difficult for the RAF; there might be half a dozen claims all about the same German bomber, so maybe the resultant scoring system is slightly more accurate after confirmation was established? Of course during the Battle of Britain it was useful for the public to think that 60+ enemy aircraft were shot down yesterday… But how many aircraft were actually confirmed as lost by both sides for the BoB period, compared with the claims?

By the last year of the war the Luftwaffe did not have
The aircraft were, for the most part, old but updated designs being built from sub-standard and/or non-strategic materials, powered by sub-standard fuel, often thrown straight into battle without being fully tested for faults and with obvious defects that once would have ruled them out of use until they were considered safe (Me163 and its occasional tendancy to explode on take off, for example).
They may have had good weapons (variations on the basic design still being used today, for example?) but did they have the ammunition to use in them?
As to its pilots being mostly experienced veterans… The experienced pilots were either in commanding positions and generally, for the most part, out of the battle or they were still gaining that experience; newly trained pilots were arriving and dying in stages over the following month. I recall an interview, in Aeroplane (I think), with a former LW pilot on the western front, who commented that it became difficult keeping the paperwork up to date since there was no-one for him to confer with about which airfield they were at when they lost so-and-so, and the difficulties they experienced when having to move fields since they invariably had more valuable spare aircraft than pilots to ferry them (what with most of the action taking place at low level with little chance to bail out, I suppose). To see how desperate the high command was witness the grabbing at straws effect of Hitler Youth being trained to fly He162 jets straight out of gliders…

Yes, a ranking system for fighter pilots is always going to be based upon the number of aircraft they have shot down (or, for bomber crews, the number of missions flown). And from a propaganda point of view it was important (witness the Memphis Belle, for example, or the trade in original German fighter pilot photos on Ebay), but it did not make so much of an impact in Britain – I doubt I could name the top three highest scoring British pilots off the top of my head.

Flood

In fact most of the victories were scored until the first half of 1944, and by the end there were many cases of 16 years old pilots literally thrown in the sky with a bunch of hours, supposed to inflict damage to an endless armada of allied planes.. Still I dont get the diffidence of Duncan Smith and others about german scoring..

Alex