There has been a full take over of russian bots in Finland in this matter. I would be very very cautious about comments like this based on "official soviet archives".
highest kill ratio (4 Viewers)
- Thread starter nimrod.michaeli
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I think these "facts" are based on someone in the internet claimed to be a person with access to soviets statistic during the war.
Even I got data from the "sources" while I was first time in the internet and interested of these as an army brat.
But if you take them with grain of salt...then it is ok. I was very surprised that they okayed the possible 5 kills of reserve officer Karhila....after soviet assault on Lappeenranta train hub killing hundred+ civilians.
GrauGeist
Generalfeldmarschall zur Luftschiff Abteilung
There were two sets of statistics held by the Soviets.
One was what Stalin wanted people to hear.
The second (and actual) set of statistics is what actually happened. It is this second set of statistics that remained sealed until the Soviet Union fell. Publications prior to 1991 use the propaganda data base, the publications after 1991 reflect the research conducted post Soviet Era figures.
A good example of how well the Soviets did against Finland (despite their propeganda), would be the extensive purges that Uncle Joe conducted amongst his commanders after the failure of his "winter war".
And the absolute irony of his purges, is that in the absence of his battle experienced commanders, the Germans nearly won in their initial assault of the Soviet Union.
FulmenTheFinn
Airman 1st Class
These kinds of feelings-based claims are typical to what I call the dilettante crowd (people with only superficial knowledge and interest in a topic); the gist being that Russian records are unreliable because they're Russian. I am however yet to see a single aviation historian claim or even insinuate that internal Russian (Soviet) recordkeeping on the occurrance of losses is unreliable. We're talking of figures the Soviet military required reported in order to function, the kind which if a Soviet officer lied about would likely see him shot. For people interested in this topic it's important to be able to differentiate between Soviet propaganda meant for the public and their internal recordkeeping.
Perhaps the most ridiculous part of taking Finnish kill claims at face value, or even with just a little bit of air, while still acknowledging that there was a lot of air in the kill claims of the air forces of other countries, is that it would make Finnish pilots exceptional super soldiers the like which the world hasn't seen before or since. Proponents of this line of thinking never seem to be able to explain what would explain this fantastical Finnish exceptionalism. Finnish pilots didn't possess exceptional qualities not found elsewhere nor did they receive exceptional training (contrary to what often seems to be imagined in Finland). There's even indications that the Germans were more effective fighter pilots than the Finns were: there's less air in the German Detachment Kuhlmey's kill claims over the Karelian Isthmus in the summer of 1944 than there are in Finnish equivalents over the same area in the same time frame. Whether that's because the Germans in this case were flying Fw 190s or because they had more refined tactics, I don't know. A more thorough study between Finnish and German fighter pilot effectiveness would certainly be an interesting read.
At any rate, the academic consensus is that Soviet records on the occurrance of losses are reliable. The reason for the loss can be wrong in the records, but the loss itself is recorded. Cross analysis with said records reveals that perhaps 60-70% of kill claims made by Finnish pilots in the Continuation War are nothing but air. The figure was lower in the Winter War, only 25%*. There are several reasons for this, including the FAF's kill crediting acceptance being at its strictest criteria in 1939-40, but the chief reason I believe is that in the Winter War the Finns were mostly shooting at relatively easy targets: unescorted bombers. This was also the case in the summer of 1941, where kill claims are still fairly reliable. Once the opponent becomes more challenging, i.e. mostly VVS fighters, the amount of air in the kill claims goes up massively. This is further exacerbated by combat happening over the water, no man's land or near enemy lines.
60-70% of claims being air is in line with what one would expect when comparing kill claims internationally. In fact it might be on the better end of the spectrum; I'm seeing a lot of cases from the other air fronts of WW2 where there's 80-90% air in kill claims. Realistically though the topic requires a proper study made about it.
*It rises to 47% if we include FAF bomber claims against aircraft on the ground. Sadly I don't have such FAF bomber claim figures for the Continuation War, only their air-to-air gunner claims.
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You forgot one variable in the Soviet equation:
If a known finnish ace shot down an enemy aircraft....politruk would never let it to be in the archives.
They were listening very carefully who was flying and where.
GrauGeist
Generalfeldmarschall zur Luftschiff Abteilung
Again:
Two different records - one for political reasons and one for statistic analysis.
It is up to you, comrade, to choose which you wish to believe.
R Leonard
Staff Sergeant
According to the USN Air Combat Statistics – World War Two report, drawn from standard squadron Aircraft Action reports, for the entire war, Eastern FM-2 aviators were credited with shooting down 194 bomber/torpedo types and 228 fighter types (Table 1). One might note, however, during the late war period it was not unusual for A6M type fighters to also be hauling bombs, so possibly noted as fighters, but actually serving as attack bombers. Table 31 provides a breakdown by Japanese type for the FMs, totaling 377 for just the period of September 1944 through August 1945 (FM losses to noted types in parenthesis - total 9):
A6M types – 87 (2)
Ki-43 – 38 (3)
Ki-61 – 29
Ki-44 – 17 (2)
J2M – 1
Ki-27 – 1
J1N – 9
Ki-45 – 4
P1Y – 18
D3A – 88
D4Y – 5
B5N – 4
B6N – 7
Ki-51 – 1
G4M – 2
Ki-46 – 1
Ki-21 – 16
Ki-48 – 21 (1)
G3M – 1
E13A – 7
Unident transport – 1
Unident SE Types – 10
Unident 2 Eng VTB Type – 9
Unident other – 0 (1)
Topspeed, you were told as long as 13 years ago that Kössi Karhila stated in his combat report of that day—July 2, 1944—that he had damaged three Il-2s before turning back after running out of ammo and returning to base. That account isn't refuted by a story in his memoirs, let alone by someone recounting in a hospital nearly 50 years later how he once saw a Messerschmitt shooting down six Il-2s in the summer of 1944 while not remembering the exact date. Furthermore, the Finns claimed significantly more Il-2 kills that evening—July 2—than appear in the Russian loss records. In fact, if the infantry sergeant's recollection does indeed refer to July 2, it aligns better with Myllylä's combat report: he reported shooting down one Il-2 and damaging three others—one of which was spewing coolant behind the Finnish side of the lines, though he didn't stay to watch its fate because he attacked a fourth Il-2, which he reported shooting down. The timing and the targets—Il-2s that had attacked the Lappeenranta airfield—are from the same group as Karhila's.
bada
Airman 1st Class
wanted to put a thumb-up, but just because of this paragraph, you got a bacon
From my own "research" of the Channel ops 41-43 (let's call it that way, but it's mostly data aggregation with a double check in the official losses data for the LW and RaF) it fit what you wrote perfectly. My issue is still with the definition of "victory", as most assume a victory is an airplane going down in flames, with missing parts, pilot screaming and a sad music, but i'm more on the side of the "seriousely dammaged, leaving combat abruptly by dive (or other maneuvre)". there are enough examples of Raf airplanes leaving the combat, getting home, airframe dammaged, sometimes fixable, sometimes not. But impossible for the LW to know this, but the LW claim was awarded. (the other way around , the same).
There is one conclusion that comes out every time: How bigger the Furball, how much inaccuracies in the claims vs real losses.
This is a point i do not agree with you, being born and lived a part of my life in a country under the CCCP rule, i can confrm that falsification of records happened and everything was done to satisfy the "party", the political "higherups", etc...and to hide all the screw-ups, so peronnaly, i can see that the available records to the public are the ones that have been published for the "party", the question would be if the real-ones are still there or not and even if they're still existing, i'll suppose it would be a big "Niet" to access them, as the narrative must survive.
There was certainly a great deal of "creative" reporting in the USSR, at least from the 1950s onwards. In my university studies, alongside other subjects, Among other subjects, I studied the history of the Baltic states—particularly Estonia—at university, and "creative" reporting was frequently employed there, especially regarding the achievement of Five-Year Plan targets.. Discrepancies between reported and actual production figures were often attributed to factors such as losses during transportation . While transport losses were indeed significant, they were nowhere near the magnitude reflected in the statistics.
However, the VVS was a military organization, and like other such bodies, it kept records of its assets, such as airplanes and their engines, and new ones could not be gotten simply by asking that the higher authority would send X new planes, you also had to tell what had happened to the previous ones. And you couldn't put a lot of combat losses to the account of accidents, because then it was easy to be accused of sabotage, which could have fatal consequences, or of assigning pilots to tasks that were too demanding compared to their training or experience. Indeed, the Soviet unit commander had to give this kind of assurance when informing personnel losses to higher level at least since 1943, probably earlier.
So it did not work to inform that your unit lost 3 planes and two pilots during a combat mission and then ask 12 planes and 10 pilots as replacements. And if you asked too few replacements and when you were ordered to sent 12 fighters to escort an Il-2 strike and you had only four fighters left, that is a situation that has grave consequences for you, maybe it would be best to shoot yourself in the head or try to defect to the enemy. The result would not be a nice chat over a cup of tea with the interrogators.
R Leonard
Staff Sergeant
It is always insightful, where they exist, to look at actual unit losses reporting. Any military organization worth its salt is positively anal about report on personnel and equipment. Bad enough in peacetime when a commander has only to deal with the next S-1 or S-4 up the line (and especially the S-1 . . . woe to the company commander who fails to submit the daily morning report on time). In wartime, sure as little green apples, two or three levels above that there is some chair warmer who will not release replacement personnel or equipment unless the loss can be clearly spelled out. It does a commander no good to lie about losses if he has any expectations of replacements; let some clown at the head shed do that in public proclamations.
andrewgeorge
Airman
- 54
- Mar 20, 2024
Because the records that are helpful for this purpose aren't public-facing official documents, they're the logs and records kept by Soviet Air Force and Naval Aviation officers for internal military administrative purposes.
I don't oppose anyone's claims, I'm interested in what the actual underlying events were that gave rise to those claims and so I'm interested in the work of researchers who bring that to life.
