Bartels Claims (and others) Pt.2

drgondog said:

The United States Air Force. The official records of ground scores was eliminated in USAF Study 85 ~ 1958. The Victory Credit repository is the USAFHRC at Maxwell AFB, AL.

The American Fighter Aces Association adopted the USAF 85 as the official basis for ace status.

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I see. World War II aerial victories required extensive data processing, because there were almost 15,800 credits. Ms. Earline M. Gober and Mrs. M. Anne Hines keypunched data cards, and Master Sergeant Thaddeus E. Bugay assisted in editing the printouts. Providing typing services were Ms. Carolyn L. Smith and Ms. Sherry Y. Hassett. The National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis and Air University's Data Automation Center assisted with the tabulations. The World War II list exceeded in volume the World War I, Korean, and Southeast Asian lists combined. USAF Credits for the Destruction of Enemy Aircraft, World War II was published by the Albert F. Simpson Historical Research Center and the Office of Air Force History in 1978 as USAF Historical Study 85.

they really didnt have to encourage these guys to shoot stuff up. they probably shot up more things than they should have. if there wasnt anything in the air to mix it up with then making the boiler blow on a locomotive was the kind of sport they liked. straffing air dromes was touchy business but they were young and didnt think too hard about it. they counted ground kills to the extent they painted them on their planes. an aircraft destroyed was an aircraft destroyed. BUT they only counted aerial victories for ace status. i only heard my father mention "ground ace" a couple times and it was almost in a tongue and cheek manner. basically no one set their goal to be one. and like drgondog said many a good pilot went down due to flak while straffing.

"BUT they only counted aerial victories for ace status"

kinda contradicts what Mr.Bill has said, and what the Mighty 8th A/F says also.

Ratsel said:

"BUT they only counted aerial victories for ace status"

kinda contradicts what Mr.Bill has said, and what the Mighty 8th A/F says also.

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Ratsel said "Eliminated by who?"

"Mr Bill" replied:

The United States Air Force. The official records of ground scores was eliminated in USAF Study 85 ~ 1958. The Victory Credit repository is the USAFHRC at Maxwell AFB, AL.

The American Fighter Aces Association adopted the USAF 85 as the official basis for ace status.

In case I was unclear

I also said previously

"The practice of awarding a ground destruction toward ace status did happen in the 8th but post war the ground scores were eliminated from consideration. Those on the rolls in American Fighter Aces all have five or more airctaft destroyed credits for air only.

Where did you misunderstand what I said?

A. The 8th awarded ground scores for Ace status, b.) the Ace status issued by the 8th for combined air/ground totals of five for ace status was recinded post war, and c. The USAF Victory Credits authority is at Maxwell.

I understood you perfectly. I was replying to bobby. Sorry about calling you Mr.Bill, but I do not know your last name and was trying to be respectful. my appologies if I offended you.

Ratsel said:

Theres a big difference between the RAF VVS. Ask any Luftwaffe pilot and most will tell you the RAF had the best pilots. The VVS had the men and material, and that was about it. The VSS had nowhere near the experiance of the Luftwaffe, so its no wonder so many fell to Luftwaffe guns during Operation Barbarosa. The BoB was a tough battle for the Luftwaffe.

Element leaders job is to hunt, wingmans job is to spot enemies and keep the flight leader safe ie: rotte. hence, multiple kills and big fat zeros.

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But you miss my point. The wingmans job was to keep flight leader safe whether they were fighting VVS or RAF, and still claims were made by many different pilots within a particular unit against RAF (pre june 41). Once they get into Russia, where apparently it was one big turkey shoot, you see only the flight leader racking up kill after kill. There was a paradigm shift in the dynamics of who got the kills once the Luftwaffe started fighting the Soviets, and it is not explained by the difference in skill level compared to the RAF.

alright lets take a look at this. i have a copy of the "inactive roster" for the 357th prior to 1945 end of war which is before the study of 58. let compare what they and the "official" status was. i will be using Bud Anderson's list of aces on his site and Merle Olmsted's ( the 357th historian) last book " To War With the Yoxford Boys". I am also researching and typing as i go....so i may end up with egg on my face...but it is what it is.

first on the roster is
Robert C Smith with 6 destroyed and 2 probables BUT transferred SO I am assuming his record transferred with him. nothing on Bud's site.merle has him @ 2.5 vics before transfer bit also has 2 R.C. Smiths

Jack R. Warren, roster has him @ 5 kills, bud's site has 5/0/0 and KIA 3/18/44 "vanished in bad weather. merle has him @ 5 pg 238

William C. Reese: roster has him @ 5, bud has him @ 5/0/0, merle has him @ 5

Leroy A. Ruder: list shows 5.5 KIA. bud @ 5.5/0/0 KIA flak 6/6/44, merle has 5.5

Mark Stepleton: list shows ace with 6 vics but most were shared. bud doesnt show as ace and neither does merle or 357th Fighter Group - USAAF
so ground kills werent the issue here. shared kills were.

Thomas L. Hayes Jr.: roster has 9 ( 1 bracketed on 2/6/44 notated as ONL?) , 2 probables, 2 pacific, bud @ 8.5/1/0 and merle @ 8.5. the 1 ground kill is not counted in either case.

( figured it out with shaw on roster....ONL was shared which would make that one ONL .5 or 8.5)

Robert Shaw: roster has 4 + .5+.5 confirmed and 3 probable, bud @ 8/1/3 with merle a straight 8. again ground vic not included

Alva Murphy: Roster 8 confirmed KIA 3/2/45 Flak, bud 6/0/0 and merle 6 NOTE: on the roster they gave him credits for 2 kills ( 2 109s) on the mission he was KIA. ASSUMING "officially" no film...no "Official" credit.

Donald McGee: roster has 5 vics and 8 probs but all JAPS. he is not in Bud's list or merle's. he was the 363 Sq commander for 1 month...this is the INACTIVE roster i am looking at.

Richard Peterson: roster 17 + 4 shared .5s and 3 probs. bud has 15.5/1/2 and merle has him @ 15.5 NOTE on the roster there are 3 kills on 5/1/45 which are unexplained. first dependency i find and its 6 days before VE day

Robert Winks: roster has 5 + 1 shared .5, bud has 5.5 and merle 5.5

i can go thru the last 6 aces and from a the whole sq whose scores are recorded on here for the 364 sq .... quick run and they are fairly true to the roster from 1945. it may have been "OFFICIAL" but on their own tally board ground kills appear were not penciled in. they were PAINTED on the planes. Merle's book on page 234 has a pic of a torn apart "C5-?" 51 with a number of vic symbols painted on it. he states it must be from either from John Storch or my father's because they both had the same # of vics. that number was Storch's but was higher than 10.5 air vics he had. and i know my dad had his ground kills painted on as well but never claimed them nor complained that they "were taken away". I do not know of any ace who lost his stature due to study 85 and there would be more than a few.





as was said..the "official" records. and as i said most didnt count the ground kills for "ace status". simple enough, find me where the USAF study 58 took ace status from fliers. show me a list of aces from any fighter group prior to 58 and one after, that has a all the pilots with ground kills added into their total subtracted. i am not afraid of being proved wrong.

Bobby Socks - everything you posted above was USAAF 8th AF Victory Credits Board tally which included air and ground scores as credited by the Board review and award process. It is also the Only source for ground scores for the 8th and is listed in a separate column. Merle had several mistakes in his roster because he faithfully followed 8th AF VCB.. for his first book Yoxford Boys, then didn't check air credits against USAF 85 for his last book.

The Victory Credit scrubbing process started in 1959 and 'completed' with USAF Sudy 85, which was published for public sale in 1978 as Ratsel corrected my typo from earlier post. It eliminated all ground scores and several air to air for which there was insufficient documentation. In fact a population of April 1945 credits were lost as well as returning POW claims/credits post VE Day.

Dr. Frank Olynyk has been instrumental in gathering evidence and submitting to HRC for review an approval and several have been awarded vis this process - so it continues to be WIP and slightly different from USAF 85

bobbysocks said:

William C. Reese: roster has him @ 5, bud has him @ 5/0/0, merle has him @ 5


Robert Winks: roster has 5 + 1 shared .5, bud has 5.5 and merle 5.5

No difference "1 shared with one pilot = .5 to each

i can go thru the last 6 aces and from a the whole sq whose scores are recorded on here for the 364 sq .... quick run and they are fairly true to the roster from 1945. it may have been "OFFICIAL" but on their own tally board ground kills appear were not penciled in. they were PAINTED on the planes. Merle's book on page 234 has a pic of a torn apart "C5-?" 51 with a number of vic symbols painted on it. he states it must be from either from John Storch or my father's because they both had the same # of vics. that number was Storch's but was higher than 10.5 air vics he had. and i know my dad had his ground kills painted on as well but never claimed them nor complained that they "were taken away". I do not know of any ace who lost his stature due to study 85 and there would be more than a few.

I know of a LOT - when the American Fighter Aces was formed (~ 1960) they did not have USAF 85 as a source. One of the first Presidents Wayne Jorda was voted out because USAF 85 reduced his 5 air to 4.5. All of the combined air/ground aces were dropped from the rolls.



as was said..the "official" records. and as i said most didnt count the ground kills for "ace status". simple enough, find me where the USAF study 58 took ace status from fliers. show me a list of aces from any fighter group prior to 58 and one after, that has a all the pilots with ground kills added into their total subtracted. i am not afraid of being proved wrong.

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Check Wayne Jorda (82nd FG?) as your first..Bob Garlich (355 8th AF ace with 7 ground scores) VP was dropped, etc, etc, etc.

At VE Day the 355th had 55 'official aces' per 8th AF. That number was reduced to 21 post 85.

bobbysocks said:

they really didnt have to encourage these guys to shoot stuff up. they probably shot up more things than they should have.

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Including 2TAF aircraft. Returning 8th AF fighters had quite a reputation for attacking 2TAF aircraft as well as 9th Air Force aircraft. It was pretty regular and the RAF were given orders to evade but not return fire. As you might expect there were times when either patience ran out or they were in danger of runnng out of fuel, so they had too.

i know merle's book had some errors. that is why i was confused with who you had colliding with the 110. in his first book he has Connaham. most of the mistakes he made in his early book were corrected in his last....but even that has a few.

i got out the bigger magnifying glass and went through all the pilots. i did find 6 ( McCall, Bank, Lepore, Howes, Peterson, and Schmanski )who were inactive at that time with "gnd" kills. i mistook that last night @ 5 am to read "end" because the 2 or 3 i looked at corresponded to the last mission that pilot flew before becoming KIA or POW. I zeroed in on Schmanski this morning after i found 2 of his combat reports. they confirmed what i remembered, he had 4 ground kills on 3/2/45. and those 2 190s and 2 he111s showed for his count that day on the roster. if it were a separate column that i didnt have i could use that as an excuse... no such luck. but why only those 6 pilots are listed with "gnd" victories and the others not is beyond me.

"No difference "1 shared with one pilot = .5 to each"


i do understand the shared victory.

I know of a LOT - when the American Fighter Aces was formed (~ 1960) they did not have USAF 85 as a source. One of the first Presidents Wayne Jorda was voted out because USAF 85 reduced his 5 air to 4.5. All of the combined air/ground aces were dropped from the rolls.

Check Wayne Jorda (82nd FG?) as your first..Bob Garlich (355 8th AF ace with 7 ground scores) VP was dropped, etc, etc, etc.

At VE Day the 355th had 55 'official aces' per 8th AF. That number was reduced to 21 post 85.

i do take your word for it. i reread my post and the last sentence may have come across harsh. i wasnt trying to be a smart ass or disrespectful. if you took it that way i apologize. i simply could not find the information. i spent time yesterday trying to find those numbers or the event itself. both evaded me. thank you for supplying me the info. i do stand corrected.

now those USAAF 15,800 kills under USAF 85 is for all fronts, correct? if so, thats puts a kink in the USAAF armor for kills in the ETO MTO, especially for some claims that I've seen just for the ETO.

What kink, what armor, what facts are you dealing with - if fighter versus fighter for 8th AF the victory credits amount to about 5182 in the air.

So what 'claims' are you referring to relative to 'credits?

You didn't come across as harsh..

would you happen to know the total a2a losses in the ETO/MTO for the entire USAAF?

total losses (not just air to air) was approximately 20000. total nonoperational losses were about 18000. This excludes loses sustained inside the continental US. So thats losses in both the ETO and the PTO.

Training accidents there were about 15000 of which 6000 were fatal. These are all within the US

Total Heavy bomber losses in the ETO were about 3500 in 1944. Extrapolating op and non-op losses, that about 1800 bombers lost to combat and about 1700 non-op.

These figures are very rough. im only posting them to give you guys a bit of a start.

About 4500-5000 a/c were lost in the PTO by US forces, from memory, combat losses that is....not sure about non-op losses

scraping the barrel now, but from memory fighter losses in the ETO in 1944 was about 1500 from all causes....thats about 700 lost to combat

A web site that I know of gives the following information on US losses

Other losses occurred too. Collisions, training accidents and so on. The table below summarizes all losses in the ETO during the war:

Aircraft Type Number Lost
B-17 4,754
B-24 2,112
P-47 1,043
P-38 451
P-51 2,201
Total 10,561

German losses (combat/noncombat/total) for two consecutive periods july-dec'43 and jan-June ' 44 are given at this site

July-Dec '43: 4302/3475/7777
Jan-June 1944: 6259/3806/10065

Caldwells site gives slightly different figures for the LW. The july-Dec '43 period he lists 6869 total losses, and for Jan-Jun '44 he lists 13959 losses

The germans lost as many aircraft in an 11month period as the US did for the entire war.

The germans certainly had a hard war.....

Ratsel said:

would you happen to know the total a2a losses in the ETO/MTO for the entire USAAF?

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Just the 8th AF. Like any research there are variables in the circumstances. I lumped air to air losses to include mid air collisions in combat, definitely shot down and seen to crash, last seen in an air battle and did not return, last seen chasing a LW fighter, crashed into trees chasing a LW fighter on the deck, last seen over enemy airspace and did not return.

Conversely strafing losses are a combination of pilot error hitting the ground while strafing, hit by flak and seen to crash, seen to crash wile strafing and presumed to have been hit, lost coolant/engine failure on the way home after strafing.

Victory credits via USAF 85 for air, and 8th AF VCB for ground scores AFTER removing duplicate records. I have recorded the air to air credits by a/c type for Me 109, Me 262, Other Jet (Ar 234, Me 163), Fw 190, Multiple Engine (me 110, Me 210, Me 410, He 111, He 177, etc) as too many are accounted for as 't/e u/i' for 'twin engine/unidentified'. There are definitely some discrepancies between actual LW losses versus USAAF VC's. Fw 190 pilots were notorius for spinning a 190 and fooling the 8th AF pilot or observed to crash after being hit and that a/c may have been deemed at less than 60% damaged.

I have them broken out by Spitfire, P-47, P-38 and Mustang. I have reviewed every published MACR and perhaps 70% of the Encounter Reports. The Macrs on Footnote are believed to be 99+% complete via sequence tracking.

In other words I have what I believe to be as good an accounting of loss to claim, and victory to claim as there might exist. Dr. Frank Olynyk is THE source for all US Victory credits by theatre and Service (USAAF, USN, USMC)

Me 109's practiced the same tatics sometimes, they'd dive to the deck, then pull straight up into the vertical, chop the throttle pull the nose over flat spin down. The pursuing a/c would think in error, scatch one 109. Another favorite would be a split S at very low altitudes. Something a -47/-51 couldn't do so low.

thanks for the information.