Japanese Versus American Victory Claims (2 Viewers)

[andrewgeorge]

Not even the last year of the war :during the Santa Cruz Island battle (25–27 October 1942), even if tactically a japanese navy victory, they had to cope with an air defense they never saw before resulting with an appaling cost for the Kido Butai, in term of trained crewmen and pilots and above all of an invaluable veteran cadre loss (groups, squadrons and sections leaders).

That's what I had in mind when I said losses were sometimes appalling even in the first year of the war. Actions like Santa Cruz or the attack on Lexington off Rabaul even earlier in the war. At least at Santa Cruz the attack and bomber pilots dished it out while getting mauled.

I'm not even sure I'd call Santa Cruz really a victory—I mean, I guess strictly speaking the American fleet lost more ships and retired from the engagement zone. But it was in support of an offensive on Guadalcanal that failed horribly, so the Japanese didn't end up really accomplishing any operational objective.

 

[Frog]

That's what I had in mind when I said losses were sometimes appalling even in the first year of the war. Actions like Santa Cruz or the attack on Lexington off Rabaul even earlier in the war. At least at Santa Cruz the attack and bomber pilots dished it out while getting mauled.

I'm not even sure I'd call Santa Cruz really a victory—I mean, I guess strictly speaking the American fleet lost more ships and retired from the engagement zone. But it was in support of an offensive on Guadalcanal that failed horribly, so the Japanese didn't end up really accomplishing any operational objective.

At least a tactical victory : the damaged Enterprise had to have been jury rigged and for a little span of time, the only flat top (temporarily) on stage was japanese.
But the dire outcome was to come later.
To sum up :
- the core of carriers were lost at Midway ;
- the core of pilots/crewmen was lost at Santa Cruz.

 

[andrewgeorge]

At least a tactical victory : the damaged Enterprise had to have been jury rigged and for a little span of time, the only flat top (temporarily) on stage was japanese.
But the dire outcome was to come later.
To sum up :
- the core of carriers were lost at Midway ;
- the core of pilots/crewmen was lost at Santa Cruz.

That's probably a fair shorthand. Attrition kept Japanese carrier air groups from ever really fully reconstituting their skilled aircrews over 1943-1944 as well. There weren't many shipboard combat deployments since the allies were largely on the offensive. And yet, every time additional air power was needed in the Southeast Area (every few months), a carrier division's air groups would deploy temporarily down to the South Pacific from Truk, where they would incur additional losses which prolonged the rebuilding.

By the time you got to Philippine Sea, most carrier aircrew simply didn't have the training and experience to be very combat effective, and so the US Navy (with all of its other material advantages—numbers of aircraft, numbers of ships, radar-directed intercept, radar fire control, etc) simply chewed them up.

 

[GregP]

So much about aviation is covered incorrectly in the media that AI tends to retrieve the incorrect stuff as gospel. I've spent a lifetime around aircraft / aviation. Hardly any media civerage about aviation is anywhere near true. Quite a few of the books used as references by AI are nothing more than collections of stories with the attendant embellishment that always creeps in when stories are told.

When I have used AI to get things about WWII aviation, it is about 40-60% accurate if I'm lucky. Many times I'm not so lucky. AI doesn't sift through text for accuracy; it sifts for published contant regardless of accuracy. It basically outputs what it finds written in text that is avaiable for perusal.

It's kind of like a self-driving car. The "goodness" of the AI driver is completely dependent upon the programmer or team that writes the software, and they're only as good as the things they anticipate might happen in traffic. If anything happens they have not anticipated, the result is a toss up as to whether or not the response is good. Witness the stupid things done by self-driving taxis fairly recently.

 

[Irregualr23]

So much about aviation is covered incorrectly in the media that AI tends to retrieve the incorrect stuff as gospel. I've spent a lifetime around aircraft / aviation. Hardly any media civerage about aviation is anywhere near true. Quite a few of the books used as references by AI are nothing more than collections of stories with the attendant embellishment that always creeps in when stories are told.

When I have used AI to get things about WWII aviation, it is about 40-60% accurate if I'm lucky. Many times I'm not so lucky. AI doesn't sift through text for accuracy; it sifts for published contant regardless of accuracy. It basically outputs what it finds written in text that is avaiable for perusal.

It's kind of like a self-driving car. The "goodness" of the AI driver is completely dependent upon the programmer or team that writes the software, and they're only as good as the things they anticipate might happen in traffic. If anything happens they have not anticipated, the result is a toss up as to whether or not the response is good. Witness the stupid things done by self-driving taxis fairly recently.

Free AI tools simply tend to make up stuff, using sota model and anything above gpt5.6 and fable5 mostly get rid off the hallucination you see in older models, and they are very useful for going over large quantities of images and ww2 orals in batches and always linking evidence with original source rather than make up any fact by their own.

AI is definitely doing better on reading and understanding context than those who doesn't understand what researcher's writing based on losses reported on each side rather than pure claims.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

S Squish I Irregualr23

Please take your argument elsewhere. The bickering and personal attacks you are making toward each other has a negative impact on everyone's forum experience.

You can both debate this topic in a civil manner without the sideshow.

 

[SaparotRob]

Sure, everyone gives AI a break but I make a teensy little mistake and then there's angry villagers with torches and pitchforks in my parking spot.

 

[Greg Boeser]

Sure, everyone gives AI a break but I make a teensy little mistake and then there's angry villagers with torches and pitchforks in my parking spot.

Could it be your "Club the Baby Seals!" bumper sticker?

 

[GrauGeist]

Could it be your "Club the Baby Seals!" bumper sticker?

Or the "Nuke the Whales" sticker...people are so uptight nowdays...

 

[SaparotRob]

I want to order an "I Chemtrails" bumper sticker.
BTW I did have an "I Nukes" Tee shirt back in the day. It was a birthday present.

 

[GrauGeist]

By the way, next time they get in your yard with torches and pitchforks, turn on the sprinklers.

It's always worked for me...

 

[andrewgeorge]

S Squish I Irregualr23

Please take your argument elsewhere. The bickering and personal attacks you are making toward each other has a negative impact on everyone's forum experience.

You can both debate this topic in a civil manner without the sideshow.

I agree re: civility, although I think there was some interesting information included in that exchange.

Squish's question about Neal Kearby's Medal of Honor engagement is a topic that has come up before I believe, and I think is worth keeping up. Just to paraphrase what was said:

As many people may know, 5th Air Force ace Neal Kearby claimed 6 Japanese fighters over Wewak on October 11, 1943. Supposedly, the six kills were confirmed by examination of the gun camera film. Kearby claimed 2 Zekes (model 21/22 type 0 navy fighter), 2 Hamps (model 32 type 0 navy fighter), and 2 Tonys (ki-61/type 3 army fighter). There's no record of any Japanese naval fighters over Wewak on that date, so probably the Zekes and Hamps were actually Oscars (ki-43/type 1 army fighter). Two other American pilots in the four ship flight claimed fighters as well--three Tonys. So 9 Japanese fighters total.

Dunn's work (and I believe the work of others too, I'm just mostly familiar with Dunn) shows Japanese army records note this exact engagement and that they even got the number of American fighters involved right (easier when it's only four). Except they note only two lost fighters shot down (an Oscar and a Tony) with another two damaged--one badly.

The question was whether this specific gun camera film still exists, and whether it could be examined to better understand how the 5th Air Force arrived at six confirmed kills for Kearby (when only four planes were damaged or shot down). As I understand it, the film definitely doesn't exist anymore. But if someone is aware of any intact gun camera footage from American fighter aircraft mission in which victories were confirmed, and which mission it was, it might be possible to get a better sense of what kind of camera evidence was actually considered sufficient to verify a shoot down. Over-claiming was practically ubiquitous, so there's a good chance whatever you're looking at is going to be from a mission in which "false" victories were awarded to fighter pilots.

For example, maybe a pilot lined up a enemy aircraft and gave it a bursts or two, thought he saw hits or fire or smoke, lost visual on the enemy, and later noticed a suspected crash site on water or land. He surmised it was the plane he shot at, and reported a victory. Let's say the enemy plane wasn't actually downed. Maybe no enemy planes were lost at all that day. What did the gun camera film show? Would visual confirmation of the enemy plane on film be sufficient to confirm the rest of the narrative? Or did the film need to actually show damage or destruction to the enemy aircraft? How often did gun cameras simply fail to record the action at all? Or produce film of such poor quality that it wasn't very helpful?

If anyone has any insights about this it would add to the topic I think.

 

[GregP]

Free AI tools simply tend to make up stuff, using sota model and anything above gpt5.6 and fable5 mostly get rid off the hallucination you see in older models, and they are very useful for going over large quantities of images and ww2 orals in batches and always linking evidence with original source rather than make up any fact by their own.

AI is definitely doing better on reading and understanding context than those who doesn't understand what researcher's writing based on losses reported on each side rather than pure claims.

Thanks for the Chatgpt info. Will have to try it.

Only informational and not a disagreement, but what makes you think loss reports are any more accurate than claims?

In many cases, they aren't even sure how many of some aircraft were built, accepted. and deployed (all separate numbers) much less how many were lost, and especially lost due to what cause. Just by way of example, go try to find an accurate number of Messerschmitt Bf 110s built. Can't do it. Many recrords were lost due to bomb damage late in the war. Wiki claims to know, but their number just follows the widely-accepted total. The actual records were lost.

Ditto Bf 109s. I have a list of werknumers allocated to the Bf 109 production program, but there is no objective evidence that all of them were assigned and built. To this day, there is no accurate number. What we hear is "somewhere around 32,000 - 34,000 units, with some saying wartime production was around 29,000. But nobody really knows since the records were lost.

Last, a thing nobody seems to talk about ... if YOU were a fighter pilot in WWII and your aircraft werre to be damaged, you'd likely do everything possible to convince the attacker that you were injured / dead and going down. So, you'd select rich mixture to produce a vapor trail and mimic an out-of-control, slow-rolling dive hoping he wouldn't follow you for more than a few thousand feet down before deciding he got you and break off and return to the mission / formation rather than follow all the way down and lose contact with his friends. People often don't take into account for real-life damage / escape situations. They think it is black and white. It isn't, by long shot.

I'm of the very strong opinion that most claims were made in good faith, and the inaccuracies are due more to modern people trying to decide what a "kill" was rather than the simple definition of ... shot out of the fight equals a "kill", whether or not it crash landed and the airplane was maube recovered and flew again or not. Either way, he was shot out of the fight. The guy who did it should get an awarded kiill for it.

If that doesn't hold up, then nobody would escort bombers to the target and back. Instead, they'd follow their first and any subsequent "kills" down to the ground and strafe them until tyey were sure of complete destruction. The bombers would wind up unescorted.

Al least, it seems that way to me.

As with EPA mileage, you opinion may vary. And that, too, is OK.

Cheers to you.

Cheers.

 

[andrewgeorge]

Thanks for the Chatgpt info. Will have to try it.

Only informational and not a disagreement, but what makes you think loss reports are any more accurate than claims?

Because the people documenting the losses knew for a fact (or did within a few days) how many planes returned from sortie and how many were damaged and how badly. They didn't necessarily know what happened to those planes or pilots, but they knew the planes were lost. That assessment wasn't impaired by g-forces or split second glimpses or adrenaline or rain squalls and cloud cover or 10 different urgent things all happening at once in a life and death situation.

Plus there's no incentive to fudge the actual number of your aircraft and aircrew losses—you need reinforcements and replacements!

Pilots and gunners in air combat had to assess in real time with all of the impairments I just mentioned, and more. Plus all of the various visually deceptive signals that you mentioned in your comment! The other guy's engine suddenly spews exhaust—smoke! it's on fire! The other guy wildly rolls and dives for the deck—maybe capped the pilot, he went in for sure! I see something hit the ground/water—most likely the plane I'm pretty sure I got good hits on with my first pass!

Plus the incentives are to be as optimistic as possible. It's good for morale, good for your career, good for your confidence, good for your ego. And if you're a fighter jockey you probably have got a least a bit of an ego!

On the other hand, let's say I'm in charge of making entries in the operational log for a fighter group. We sent up 25 fighters from a couple different squadrons, and 22 returned. One of those crash landed on the runway. Another 4 had varying degrees of damage. Pilots returning report seeing one of our planes that didn't return shot down. The other two planes no one knows. So I put in we had 4 damaged, one write-off on crash landing, two lost for operational/unknown reasons, and one maybe shot down or maybe also lost for operational/unknown reasons.

Maybe two days later one of the missing pilots shows up—he force landed at a different airstrip. His fighter was a write-off. I record that, and probably amend the record. The other plane is still lost for unknown reasons.

We need replacements for the four fighters we've lost. Command needs to know what our current available air strength is. The only thing I'm unsure about is what exactly happened to some of our lost planes, but I'm not confused about the fact they didn't come back.

Now it could be those records were lost or deliberately destroyed in retreat or at the end of the war. And so all we have to go on for evidence of an action is the other side's aircrew reports. But given that in most situations where loss records do exist they tend to reveal aircrew reports as overly optimistic, I think it's fair even in that circumstance to take the reported results with a grain of salt.

 

[Squish]

Now it could be those records were lost or deliberately destroyed in retreat or at the end of the war. And so all we have to go on for evidence of an action is the other side's aircrew reports. But given that in most situations where loss records do exist they tend to reveal aircrew reports as overly optimistic, I think it's fair even in that circumstance to take the reported results with a grain of salt.

The IJNAF records survived the war and are fairly detailed / complete. You can look up the records based on the individual squadron / air group. They are more accessible than any US or European records.

The IJAAF records did not survive so a lot of the citations for those losses are based on US intercepts of encoded Japanese messages and are less complete.

There is also the US SBS re-construction of Japanese losses. Those loss figures should be treated as a gross approximation for the most part.

Squish's question about Neal Kearby's Medal of Honor engagement is a topic that has come up before I believe, and I think is worth keeping up. Just to paraphrase what was said:

Unfortunately the likelihood of finding the Kearby gun camera footage is slim to none; allegedly most US gun camera footage was destroyed for silver reclamation / recycling.

At best what I can hope to do is maybe find some kind of transcript that describes the footage, as well as more letter/memos regarding the engagement.

I already have the US Intelligence transcript that indicates the Japanese only lost 2 fighters in New Guinea on the day of Kearby's mission.

 

[GregP]

Because the people documenting the losses knew for a fact (or did within a few days) how many planes returned from sortie and how many were damaged and how badly. They didn't necessarily know what happened to those planes or pilots, but they knew the planes were lost. That assessment wasn't impaired by g-forces or split second glimpses or adrenaline or rain squalls and cloud cover or 10 different urgent things all happening at once in a life and death situation.

Plus there's no incentive to fudge the actual number of your aircraft and aircrew losses—you need reinforcements and replacements!

Pilots and gunners in air combat had to assess in real time with all of the impairments I just mentioned, and more. Plus all of the various visually deceptive signals that you mentioned in your comment! The other guy's engine suddenly spews exhaust—smoke! it's on fire! The other guy wildly rolls and dives for the deck—maybe capped the pilot, he went in for sure! I see something hit the ground/water—most likely the plane I'm pretty sure I got good hits on with my first pass!

Plus the incentives are to be as optimistic as possible. It's good for morale, good for your career, good for your confidence, good for your ego. And if you're a fighter jockey you probably have got a least a bit of an ego!

On the other hand, let's say I'm in charge of making entries in the operational log for a fighter group. We sent up 25 fighters from a couple different squadrons, and 22 returned. One of those crash landed on the runway. Another 4 had varying degrees of damage. Pilots returning report seeing one of our planes that didn't return shot down. The other two planes no one knows. So I put in we had 4 damaged, one write-off on crash landing, two lost for operational/unknown reasons, and one maybe shot down or maybe also lost for operational/unknown reasons.

Maybe two days later one of the missing pilots shows up—he force landed at a different airstrip. His fighter was a write-off. I record that, and probably amend the record. The other plane is still lost for unknown reasons.

We need replacements for the four fighters we've lost. Command needs to know what our current available air strength is. The only thing I'm unsure about is what exactly happened to some of our lost planes, but I'm not confused about the fact they didn't come back.

Now it could be those records were lost or deliberately destroyed in retreat or at the end of the war. And so all we have to go on for evidence of an action is the other side's aircrew reports. But given that in most situations where loss records do exist they tend to reveal aircrew reports as overly optimistic, I think it's fair even in that circumstance to take the reported results with a grain of salt.

There is an old saying about shooting/hanging/killing the messenger. In the USSR, Stalin was known to kill people who annoyed him, never mind people who told him he was losing a lot of ariplanes and troops to the Germans whenhe wanted to win. The Commisars weren't highly motivated to send in accurate numbers. They were motivated to do whatever was reuired to keep Stalin happy or at least focused on someone else.

Some of the same happened in Germany, according to former German soldiers I have spoken with over decades past.

Many times, a damaged plane didn't return to the home airfield but rather landed at another field. In the chaos of wartime, the two reports, when it DID return, were not likely reconciled accurately every time. Since they WERE two reports, it would have been EASY to file them is separate places or lose one. In some cases a returned plane was scrapped, but classified as returned in the mission action reports. In others. a plane was classied as "struck off charge," but was later repaired with parts from other aircraft and flew again.

From personal experience, loss reports are not nearly as accurate as people tapping on computer keys today seem to believe they are.

I have told this story a couple of times in here, but I was charged with coming up with a database for tracking US Navy Standard Missile parts for a company in Scottsdale, Arizona as a young engineer. I did, and we had about 2 dozen parts that were classifed as missing by virtue of having been "expended in test." Amaxingly. several shpwed up as customer returns from Australia for repair! Turned out that when inverntory time came around, the clerks in the Navy were told to account for all parts. If they couldn't find them, they listed them as "expended in test" when, in fact, they were sold to Australia as Fopreign Military Slaes (FMS). That's only ONE time. There were others, amounting to several percent that were classifed as one thing and later found to be another when they either "showed up" or could not later be found.

There was a case when a Navy base on the west coast got a nerw commander and he decided to ":clean up the base." There was an old railroad siding just OUTSIDE the base where two old rusty railraod boxcars were standaing and had been for years. When they cut them open, there were 10 SM-2 missiles in shipping container that were there, outside the base, and could have been stolen. In the database, the serial numbers were shown as "expended in test."

Don't tell me inaccuracies don;t happen!

I have put most of the tables from the Statistical Digest of World War Two into Microsoft Excel. There are at least 10 tables where the totals shown simply don't add up. That is, I put in the data as shown in the tables (checked multiple times) and them used Excel formulas to sum them up, and found several places (more than you'd think) where the published totals don't tally correctly. There are two possible explanations. One, the toals are correct and the data are wrong, and two: the data are correct and they added up the data manually wrong. Of the two, the second is WAY more likely. It;s hard to get an accurate total if the data you are using is incorrect.

In point of fact, there is no objective evidence that the data are correct at all ... only our assumption that is must be. To have objective evidence, we'd need a separate total known to be accurate. We don't have that. We only have what we have, and we assume it is close enough to be nearly accurate. In many cases, it likely is. It is also likely thath in many cases, it isn't. The fog was war doesn't only apply to combat reports. It also applies to data collection and records that we have no way to determine as actually complete.

Lots of wiggle room for inaccurate data, and I have seen actual records lost (and also discovered that were formerly presumed to have been lost) in the 1970s peacetime UJSAF. There was MUCH more opportunity for inaccuracies to creep in during WWII when records were on paper that sometimes got lost, wet and stuck together, or had the ink run and become unreadable, and also disappeared on ships coming home during the war. Reconstructed data is often at odds with what really happened.

 

[CHen10]

Soviet records are incredibly accurate.

- Soviet records contain a list of the tasks carried out so if there are 7 tasks but only 5 task reports then we know records are missing. This has never happened to me personally and the records of the tasks are always there. So the records are all there and we would know if they aren't there.

- EVEN If hypothetically some records are lost, it still doesn't matter because losses are recorded at multiple levels and there are multiple copies of those records. There will always be a trace of the loss. It's too far fetched to say every trace of the loss will get lost. There are just too many documents that would have to go.

-Losses are always documented. If an aircraft becomes a loss, there is always a record of that loss.

-Soviets can't lie about records because everything is accounted for. Pilots, planes, ammunition, fuel, etc. are all documented as being used or lost. If the Soviets lost loads of stuff and didn't report it they would be questioned as to why it wasn't reported.

- Soviet records also explain the circumstances of the loss and the type of mission that was being flown when the loss happened

-All ww2 aviation historians that analyse victories always look at opposing losses.

Henry Sakaida
Michael Claringbould
John Lundstrom
Edward Young
Gábor and Dániel Horváth
Nikita Egorov
Christer Bergström
Ivan Lavrinenko

And many more

Plus all the people that do research and post their findings online

But still, if one didn't report the losses, he could not ask for replacements. If your unit is understreght because of that, at some point one was not able to carry out the missions one was ordered to and you'll be exposed at the latest, probably earlier because the lack of planes would have been easily noticed. A lot of combat losses could not be attributed to technical faults, because then the TO of the unit would have been suddenly brought in for questioning and would hardly have accepted the charge of sabotage to save the unit's commander's ass. The sentence for sabotage was easily death.
Click to expand...

This quote by J Juha3 is another perfect explanation why Soviets cannot just lie

 

[andrewgeorge]

From personal experience, loss reports are not nearly as accurate as people tapping on computer keys today seem to believe they are.

I have told this story a couple of times in here, but I was charged with coming up with a database for tracking US Navy Standard Missile parts for a company in Scottsdale, Arizona as a young engineer. I did, and we had about 2 dozen parts that were classifed as missing by virtue of having been "expended in test." Amaxingly. several shpwed up as customer returns from Australia for repair! Turned out that when inverntory time came around, the clerks in the Navy were told to account for all parts. If they couldn't find them, they listed them as "expended in test" when, in fact, they were sold to Australia as Fopreign Military Slaes (FMS). That's only ONE time. There were others, amounting to several percent that were classifed as one thing and later found to be another when they either "showed up" or could not later be found.

There was a case when a Navy base on the west coast got a nerw commander and he decided to ":clean up the base." There was an old railroad siding just OUTSIDE the base where two old rusty railraod boxcars were standaing and had been for years. When they cut them open, there were 10 SM-2 missiles in shipping container that were there, outside the base, and could have been stolen. In the database, the serial numbers were showna s "expended in test."

Don;t tell me inaccuracies don;t happen!

I'm sure that's the case. It's true that the ultimate fate of lots of aircraft is not accounted for, even in American records. During the war, planes broke and were abandoned by the thousands.

But we're talking about mission reports here, not a total accounting of all equipment. I'm sure there were miscounts or scenarios where planes landed at different airstrips and created discrepancies. But careful researchers do point out these inconsistencies when they find them. And the gap between enemy claims and recorded losses (whether known to be from enemy action or not) is so significant that to assume the accuracy of claims you'd have to posit entire shadow air forces worth of phantom aviators and planes.

 

[Frog]

There is an old saying about shooting/hanging/killing the messenger. In the USSR, Stalin was known to kill people who annoyed him, never mind people who told him he was losing a lot of ariplanes and troops to the Germans whenhe wanted to win. The Commisars weren't highly motivated to send in accurate numbers. They were motivated to do whatever was reuired to keep Stalin happy or at least focused on someone else.

Some of the same happened in Germany, according to former German soldiers I have spoken with over decades past.

Many times, a damaged plane didn't return to the home airfield but rather landed at another field. In the chaos of wartime, the two reports, when it DID return, were not likely reconciled accurately every time. Since they WERE two reports, it would have been EASY to file them is separate places or lose one. In some cases a returned plane was scrapped, but classified as returned in the mission action reports. In others. a plane was classied as "struck off charge," but was later repaired with parts from other aircraft and flew again.

From personal experience, loss reports are not nearly as accurate as people tapping on computer keys today seem to believe they are.

I have told this story a couple of times in here, but I was charged with coming up with a database for tracking US Navy Standard Missile parts for a company in Scottsdale, Arizona as a young engineer. I did, and we had about 2 dozen parts that were classifed as missing by virtue of having been "expended in test." Amaxingly. several shpwed up as customer returns from Australia for repair! Turned out that when inverntory time came around, the clerks in the Navy were told to account for all parts. If they couldn't find them, they listed them as "expended in test" when, in fact, they were sold to Australia as Fopreign Military Slaes (FMS). That's only ONE time. There were others, amounting to several percent that were classifed as one thing and later found to be another when they either "showed up" or could not later be found.

There was a case when a Navy base on the west coast got a nerw commander and he decided to ":clean up the base." There was an old railroad siding just OUTSIDE the base where two old rusty railraod boxcars were standaing and had been for years. When they cut them open, there were 10 SM-2 missiles in shipping container that were there, outside the base, and could have been stolen. In the database, the serial numbers were shown as "expended in test."

Don't tell me inaccuracies don;t happen!

I have put most of the tables from the Statistical Digest of World War Two into Microsoft Excel. There are at least 10 tables where the totals shown simply don't add up. That is, I put in the data as shown in the tables (checked multiple times) and them used Excel formulas to sum them up, and found several places (more than you'd think) where the published totals don't tally correctly. There are two possible explanations. One, the toals are correct and the data are wrong, and two: the data are correct and they added up the data manually wrong. Of the two, the second is WAY more likely. It;s hard to get an accurate total if the data you are using is incorrect.

In point of fact, there is no objective evidence that the data are correct at all ... only our assumption that is must be. To have objective evidence, we'd need a separate total known to be accurate. We don't have that. We only have what we have, and we assume it is close enough to be nearly accurate. In many cases, it likely is. It is also likely thath in many cases, it isn't. The fog was war doesn't only apply to combat reports. It also applies to data collection and records that we have no way to determine as actually complete.

Lots of wiggle room for inaccurate data, and I have seen actual records lost (and also discovered that were formerly presumed to have been lost) in the 1970s peacetime UJSAF. There was MUCH more opportunity for inaccuracies to creep in during WWII when records were on paper that sometimes got lost, wet and stuck together, or had the ink run and become unreadable, and also disappeared on ships coming home during the war. Reconstructed data is often at odds with what really happened.

Some times ago, because of a service relocation, I had to have listed the condemned materiel and seized commodities that were encumbering the underground for destruction and riddance.

I discovered quite a number of unrecorded, unrelated, untraceable seized items, that of course were discreetly destroyed.