A look at German fighter Ace kill claims (1 Viewer)

bada said:

Hi,
I have those books (except the one about the 2nd group) and what i found that one is really generic (John Starkey) and gives a general view but nothing else and Franks' book well, looks more like a statistics digest than a book explaining the missions, but is a very good start.
So being interested in this period mainly started because it were the würger's years and i realy like the würger, i started with the JG26 books from Caldwell but then, when looking at the RaF side, there was no equal. So i started to dig, looking for books but not one fulfilled what i really wanted : a Day to Day Daylight operations record for the Raf, with Maps, flight-plans, timings , serial numbers, airplane models, pilots' names, losses, claims, target info (if present), etc, etc . So i downloaded 40Gig's of data from the national archives, Orbs and combat reports, the whole losses list from the german archives and other stuff found here and there and i will (try to) synthesize this data into a day to day view of each "mission" with the Luftwaffe action also present (Caldwell's Jg26 and Mombeek's JG2 books are really a must for anyone interested by the channel front).
For the moment, i'm working on the german losses, from original LW documents, for the Luftflotte2and3, throwing al the data manually into a database, so it would be easier to search and also to make statistics (i like stats) but it's seriously time consuming. 1month of LW losses can take up to 8hours work.
anyway, i limit myself to the FighterCommand (goup11+12) missions, and only the ones in day-time, so the intruders missions won't be there, nor the Coastal command.
It's my personal project i work on within my "free-time" so it won't be finished next month or even next year...

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That is a serious effort on your part.

Please, keep us informes about that proyecto. A bunch here are surely interesting in buying that book (or books)

Allied combat air commands in Britain 1941 to 1943, 2nd Tactical Air Force, Army Co-Operation, Fighter, Bomber and Coastal Commands, Fighter Command mostly 10, 11 and 12 Group. 8th Air Force, 9th Air Force.

Any number of daily/weekly/monthly/annual reports in the archives, with overlapping statistics and different measuring criteria, night and day missions versus night, dawn, day and dusk missions. Given the British have made available online the squadron level records it sounds like an attempt to build up rather than locate the higher level reports and then use the lower level reports to add detail. Many RAF squadron records do not record serial numbers or alternatively individual letters.

Air 14/3364 picture 30, 59, 60
AIR 16/1036 picture 52, 206
AIR 22/307 picture 12

Richard Davis bombing spreadsheets have only a summary for 1941, then cover 2 Group operations to end May 1943 but can exclude missions where "nothing happened".
Mighty Eighth War Diary is not a great read, lots of data though.
Fighter Command Losses by Franks, use as a guide.
Bomber Command War Diaries, Middlebrook and Everitt
Fighter Command War Diaries John Foreman
RAF Fighter Command Victory Claims John Foreman

JG26 book, what I find interesting is what is not reported, even though it is obvious RAF records were consulted. One of the good stories is when Galland after picking up food and drink for a party detours via England where he shoots at three Spitfires, one "explodes", one "goes down in flames" and for the third the results are not clear, Galland then flies back to France to present the food. Looking at the RAF records indicates all three aircraft were hit, landed, and were repaired. (15 April 1941)

On 23 December 1944 JG26 hit a Lancaster formation, claiming 5 Lancasters and one Mosquito, and Caldwell states "The RAF raid was a complete disaster" Bomber Command war diaries confirms the claims tally but 2 were the result of a collision before the French coast, and flak played a hand in at least three of the other losses. The cloud had cleared so Oboe with its long straight bomb run could not be used, one Lancaster did not receive the message and used Oboe, with predictable results. JG26 is over credited here.

All in all if Caldwell mentions RAF losses he is usually right as far as numbers are concerned but not always right in attributing them by cause of loss.

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Dimlee said:

Your logic is perfect - for the system based on the logic. For VVS and the Soviet military in general your logic can be applied to some periods but not to others.
Imagine this situation: the sentence for sabotage is probably death but the sentence for reporting the truth is certainly death.
Imagine that you saw how your boss was taken out of the office by NKVD and disappeared.
(Just five examples from thousands)

Yakov Alksnis - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Aleksandr Loktionov - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Yakov Smushkevich - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Pavel Rychagov - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Alexander Novikov - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Or he was shot by a firing squad after a quick conversation with a Member of the War Council whom Stavka sent to the front lines to stop the panic and turn things around.

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I wouldn't see that at least most of these gentlemen's fates as having depended on telling the truth. Alksnis' fate was due being Latvian. A victim of one of those persecutions against nationalities. Two were victims of the purges of Baltic military district and in Baltic states in general, tens of thousands of Baltics were deported to Siberia just before the start of Operation Barbarossa. Could also be behind Smushkevich's fate, he was Lithuanian. Novikov, on the other hand, probably had to suffer, like Zhukov, from the "re-disciplining" of the soldiers, because the party was afraid that the heroes of the GPW (Great Patriotic War) had become too powerful. IIRC Zhukov being accused of "Bonabartism", the leaders of the USSR remembered well how the French Revolution had turned out.