Just Schmidt
Senior Airman
I've on several occasions thought about making this post reading other threads, but do it in its own thread, in case it should lead to responses.
Usually while discussing relative merits of different aircraft, so-called 'confirmed' claims are brought into the discussion. I will not address the question about to which degrees claims, in as far they can be known with absolute certainty, can be used to compare relative merits, at least not as the only indicator. What I want to challenge is the assumption that, while everybody overclaimed (which there seem to be near consensus about), we can assume everybody overclaimed by the same factor, irrespective of country, unit or theatre etc. I should point out that I am NOT claiming that different countries, by and large, was worse overclaimers, only that differences demonstrably did occasionally occur.
One example (and i don't own the book where i read it, or remeber which one it was, anyway this should be pretty uncontroversial), German night fighters in 43-44 seemed to be claiming with impressive presission. The nature of the fighting makes this a rather unsurprizing fact. Much combat was stalking of one fighter after one bomber at a time. ranges were close, and because of the dark a burning aircraft was visible till it hit the ground. Only in extreme cases would two fighters shoot at the same bomber, and in confirming the claims of the night it was possible, most of the combat occurring over German held territory, to count the wrecks on the ground the following day. Compared to confused dogfighting over enemy territory the contrast should be clear.
In Bloody Shambles it is apparant that two different Japanese army fighter units fighting in the same theatre differed considerably as to the extent they were overclaiming. It is even quite clear that some pilots showed considerably more 'enthusiasm' than others.
Another famous and generally recognized example is the USA's day offensive over Germany, where maybe hundreds of defensive gunners were blazing away at the same fighter. If it happened to catch fire, all of them was likely to assume that his bullets were the decisive ones. The tendency of the Fw 190 to spew out black smoke from its engine under certain circumstances should in this context (and in dogfights) imply that more of these were overclaimed than Bf 109's. Again only from memory, I think the phenomenon was common to several radial engines.
This is not intended to be an exhaustive list, but examples covering a pretty wide range of circumstances, only some examples to disprove that the situation always was uniform. I do claim (pun intended) that wherever we decide to measure results we have to consider the theatre, the tactical circumstances in the widest sense and even the persons and types involved. Possibly even if it was early or late in their careers. Quite often lack of relevant information will then lead to the conclusion that we cannot in that particular instant be reasonably sure.
It is of course depressing to limit the avenues through which we can assess the relative merits of different aircraft, but to apply to all cases an average of , say, 1:2 or 1:3 is in my opinion methodologically unsound. And in the cases where we CAN be reasonably certain simply lazy.
Usually while discussing relative merits of different aircraft, so-called 'confirmed' claims are brought into the discussion. I will not address the question about to which degrees claims, in as far they can be known with absolute certainty, can be used to compare relative merits, at least not as the only indicator. What I want to challenge is the assumption that, while everybody overclaimed (which there seem to be near consensus about), we can assume everybody overclaimed by the same factor, irrespective of country, unit or theatre etc. I should point out that I am NOT claiming that different countries, by and large, was worse overclaimers, only that differences demonstrably did occasionally occur.
One example (and i don't own the book where i read it, or remeber which one it was, anyway this should be pretty uncontroversial), German night fighters in 43-44 seemed to be claiming with impressive presission. The nature of the fighting makes this a rather unsurprizing fact. Much combat was stalking of one fighter after one bomber at a time. ranges were close, and because of the dark a burning aircraft was visible till it hit the ground. Only in extreme cases would two fighters shoot at the same bomber, and in confirming the claims of the night it was possible, most of the combat occurring over German held territory, to count the wrecks on the ground the following day. Compared to confused dogfighting over enemy territory the contrast should be clear.
In Bloody Shambles it is apparant that two different Japanese army fighter units fighting in the same theatre differed considerably as to the extent they were overclaiming. It is even quite clear that some pilots showed considerably more 'enthusiasm' than others.
Another famous and generally recognized example is the USA's day offensive over Germany, where maybe hundreds of defensive gunners were blazing away at the same fighter. If it happened to catch fire, all of them was likely to assume that his bullets were the decisive ones. The tendency of the Fw 190 to spew out black smoke from its engine under certain circumstances should in this context (and in dogfights) imply that more of these were overclaimed than Bf 109's. Again only from memory, I think the phenomenon was common to several radial engines.
This is not intended to be an exhaustive list, but examples covering a pretty wide range of circumstances, only some examples to disprove that the situation always was uniform. I do claim (pun intended) that wherever we decide to measure results we have to consider the theatre, the tactical circumstances in the widest sense and even the persons and types involved. Possibly even if it was early or late in their careers. Quite often lack of relevant information will then lead to the conclusion that we cannot in that particular instant be reasonably sure.
It is of course depressing to limit the avenues through which we can assess the relative merits of different aircraft, but to apply to all cases an average of , say, 1:2 or 1:3 is in my opinion methodologically unsound. And in the cases where we CAN be reasonably certain simply lazy.
