LUFTWAFFE EXPERTEN Claims vs. Kills

http://www.warbirdforum.com/claiming.htm

"Some (though not all) Luftwaffe units and Finnish units were considerably more accurate than most, most of the time...."

This is the theory which should be checked and tested. And if there is anybody who have chance to found Soviet claims and loss reports in northwestern front (Leningrad, and north from Lake Ladoga here is are these list of Finnish Air Force Fighter Squadrons:

Fighter Squadron 24:

https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luettelo_Lentolaivue_24:n_ilmavoitoista_ja_sotatoimitappioista

Fighter Squadron 26:

https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luettelo_Lentolaivue_26:n_ilmavoitoista_ja_sotatoimitappioista

Fighter Squadron 28:

https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luettelo_Lentolaivue_28:n_ilmavoitoista_ja_sotatoimitappioista

Fighter Squadron 32:

https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luettelo_Lentolaivue_32:n_ilmavoitoista_ja_sotatoimitappioista

Fighter Squadron 34:

https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luettelo_Lentolaivue_34:n_ilmavoitoista_ja_sotatoimitappioista


Claims during Finnish-Russo Winter War (1939-40):

Tupolev TB-3 1 bomber
Tupolev SB-2 103 bomber
Iljušin DB-3 ja DB-4 50 bomber
Polikarpov I-15bis 7 fighter
Polikarpov I-153 13 fighter
Polikarpov I-16 22 fighter
Polikarpov R-5 11 fighter

Losses: 47 (35 shut down by enemy fighters and 8 by AA-guns, 4 other combat losses)

translations:

Päivämäärä = Date
Aika= Time
Paikka = Place
Ohjaaja = Pilot
Oma kone = own aircraft type/model
Alasammuttu kone = shut down enemy aircraft type

tammikuu= January
helmikuu= February
maaliskuu=March
huhtikuu=April
toukokuu= May
kesäkuu=June
heinäkuu=July
elokuu=August
syyskuu=September
lokakuu=October
marraskuu=November
joulukuu=December

talvisota = Finnish-Russo Winter War (30th of Nov 1939 - 13th of March 1940)
jatkosota= Continuation War (25th June 1941 - 5th Sept 1944)

One thing is sure and well know - enemy air craft even shut down in real life was many cases wrongly classified and typed. During the Continuation War Finns had claims of 1567 killings + 1 107 shut down by AA-artillery.

On the other hand their own combat losses were (Continuation War):

86 shut down by enemy pilots
66 shut down by enemy AA-artillery
63 other combat losses
--------------------------------
combat losses 215

There is interesting correlation between fighters:AA-artillery losses and claims

86:66
1567: 1107

When you have a German tank abandoned on the battlefield, through either lack of fuel, or whatever reason.
If it's not recovered by the Germans, what will the first allied ground unit do when they first see it ?
Do you think they'll send someone on foot to check it out??

IMO they'd send some armor rounds thru it from a safe distance to make sure it's dead and useless, they'll take no chances.

When the battlefield is surveyed later, how do they determine what made the tank ineffective in the first place ?

tyrodtom said:

When the battlefield is surveyed later, how do they determine what made the tank ineffective in the first place ?

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The Operational Research Sections (ORS) both US and British sought to establish the cause of destruction of vehicles by examining them. Rockets, bombs and different artillery were usually easily distinguishable for tanks, as were those that had been abandoned. Motor transport was often too badly damaged to assess exactly how it was destroyed and the ORS acknowledged that this weighted their "unknown causes" columns.

The Mortain battle area was examined by two different British ORS between 12-20 August (that's starting a mere 5 days after the battle and as soon as US forces had recaptured Mortain).

The 2nd TAF had claimed 8 armoured vehicles destroyed and the 9th AF 69. In fact only 46 tanks and self propelled guns were found in the battle area and only 9 were considered to have been destroyed by air weapons. Because, unusually, the 9th AF had used rockets, firing 600, it was not possible to ascertain which air force had destroyed which armour.
The ORS both acknowledged that the Germans may have recovered some vehicles, but this hardly accounts for the discrepancy between claims and actual destruction. German PoWs consistently stated that vehicles destroyed from the air invariably burnt out and that burnt out vehicles were never salvaged. PoW interrogation was also within the remit of the ORS.

Of the 33 Panther tanks destroyed in the Mortain area 14 were destroyed by the US Army, 5 by rockets, 6 were abandoned intact, 4 were destroyed by their crews, 1 was destroyed by a bomb. The remaining 3 were "unknown causes".
Those are pretty typical ratios for armoured vehicles.

Cheers

Steve

Hello Mythbust
are you aware Keskinen's Stenman's Ilmavoitot Osa 1 2 or their Suomen Ilmavoimat Osat II -VI, those give at least partial answer to the question of FiAF fighter pilots' claim accuracy.

Juha

Juha said:

Hello Mythbust
are you aware Keskinen's Stenman's Ilmavoitot Osa 1 2 or their Suomen Ilmavoimat Osat II -VI, those give at least partial answer to the question of FiAF fighter pilots' claim accuracy.

Juha

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I haven't heard about this book. Is there any new Russian studies about their official losses during Continuation War and Winter War? I think it's the only way to solve thispuzzle. I don't believe that Finns had any special system to confirm the claim like searching the hulk of aircraft. For instance they could be lot of double claims with both pilots and AA-gun crew counting the same Russian aircraft shut down.

Welcome to the forum, Mythbust!

I think that the claims, weren't at the top of these gentlemens list, more likely it was get out, do your duty, survive, the pure terror in combat, just to keep on top of the situation, were your comrades are and the enemy, to make sure that you don't shoot down one of your own, which I can imagine did happen, I'm sure that a claim was made more than once for the same victim, which is understandable in the heat of the battle, which I think is more of a honest mistake than a 'lie'....
Come on, how many here, could go through the nerve wrecking times like they did and not make such a simple human mistake as a misclaim?

mythbust said:

I haven't heard about this book. Is there any new Russian studies about their official losses during Continuation War and Winter War? I think it's the only way to solve thispuzzle. I don't believe that Finns had any special system to confirm the claim like searching the hulk of aircraft. For instance they could be lot of double claims with both pilots and AA-gun crew counting the same Russian aircraft shut down.

Click to expand...

Altogether 7 books. The FiAF claims are compared to the war diaries and other docus of Soviet air regimets etc and also to the post-war VVS KBF (Baltic Fleet AF) War Chronicle.
And at least at LeR 3 in 1944 Räty (the GS officer of LeR 3) checked against possible evidences (incl. info from ground troop and radio intelligence info) the claims accepted in HLeLvs and then sent to the regiment, he was clearly fairly thorough man. Ultimately the C-in-C FiAF, Gen.Lt "Lunkka" Lundqvist accepted the claims.

Juha

Juha

Lucky13 said:

make sure that you don't shoot down one of your own, which I can imagine did happen,

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It happened all too often and there were some illustrious victims of "friendly" fire. Bader springs to mind.

One of the reasons that Leigh Mallory refused to go along with Montgomery's plan for an airborne landing to help take Caen was that the Royal Navy refused a night time cease fire to allow the aircraft to fly over. The Royal Navy had a reputation for blazing away at anything that flew......including Fleet Air Arm aircraft!

Cheers

Steve

Well said Lucky15, like your avitar ... nice buns. Most claims were the result of honest observation.

I personally don't care if the Luftwaffe (USAAC, RAF, IJA, IJN, etc.) salvaged a plane. If you shot it down, it was a "kill," and properly awarded as such. If they got parts from it, I don't care ... a kill means you put the pilot and plane on the ground and out of local combat at that time ... to me.

Purists may agrue, but puttting a live (or dead) pilot on the ground in a plane that cannot continue combat means a kill to me, and that's the way it is.

GregP said:

Purists may agrue, but puttting a live (or dead) pilot on the ground in a plane that cannot continue combat means a kill to me, and that's the way it is.

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That's up to you, but it's also why most air forces had a category "damaged". To them it wasn't about pilot scores it was about intelligence and trying to assess the effect of their efforts on the enemy's resources. A downed aircraft might very well be counted as a kill (even by these criteria, not just yours) but it was not destroyed.
Neither RAF nor US airmen claimed kills, they claimed aircraft destroyed and that is an important distinction. Aircraft claimed as "probable" often survived. Aircraft claimed as "damaged" sometimes did not. It was a difficult task for the intelligence officers to make realistic assessments from the combat/encounter reports and they often failed to do so.
Cheers
Steve

I'm going to have to retire, get divorced, or both to have enough spare time to read through all these entertaining forums. Only got to page 3 of this one before fast forwarding to this point. I find the banter between members more fun than the dry facts by a long shot. Did anyone mention Japanese aces yet????

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:

The system for confirming kills by the Luftwaffe was more strict then most but ofcourse they were overinflated just like everyone else. The RAF, USAAF, and the Soviets did it also. All in all I would say the allies lied more about what they lost then what they shot down. It was a moral issue plus they could not admit it to it, just like the Hitler could not admit defeat even until the very end.

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"Lie" implies a deliberate attempt to deceive; I don't think that the pilots or air gunners were "lying" by that definition. It's probably a stretch to claim that the victories reported to the media were necessarily "lies," in that the service's publicity machines simply would not evaluate the data given to them.

during my research of 8th and 9th AF Victory credits, I devoted a lot of time researching Prien, Tony Wood, Caldwell, Lorant/Goyat and lot of communication with Erich and others on this site.

Prien was the first to help me sort out overclaims and most could be lumped into category of shot down/Crash landing in which the aircraft was deemed less than 60% damaged - in which case the LW did not report it as a lost a/c. When able to compare I found about 80-100% actual destroyed on the LW books. Having said that, the LW did not differentiate loss to bomber or fighter in air combat

Conversely, the LW Victory Credits with all sorts of film verication was usually 60-100% overstated to the 8th/9th AF a/c which failed to return. I will also comment that there were many a/c salvaged due to battle damage as well as aircraft that sought haven in Sweden and Switzerland. The point about the LW claims process and subsequent awards in the Battle of Germany in the West is this:
1. The LW reviewers had no way of ascertaining whether a salvageable but damaged aircraft went to Switzerland or Sweden. Undeniably the services of the aircraft and crew was denied to the US, but the Claims review process performed correctly would assign only a damaged credit.
2. Ditto 'one that was hit but did not fall and returned to England'. No way the claims reviewer would know whether it was repaired or salvaged.
3. The Only basis for a Victory credit should have been for an aircraft actually destroyed and the LW KJ reports cited many observed crash sites for confirmation as well as film and/or testimonial of witness.

Tony Woods data focuses on 3. as well as Caldwell, Prien, et al. THESE Rollups are at best 50% overstated and frequently 100% overstated to actual NYR records of the USAAF... and gets worse when one reflects that many of the NYR were killed by flak, not fighters... and no records of flak battery credits seem to be available to load up along with fighter VC's.

For those in doubt of what I posted here, get Tony Wood's LW VC listings as a general basis, and pick up a copy of Freeman's 8th AF "Mighty Eighth War Diary". He has errors as any work that magnitude would have - but it contains on a Field Order by Field Order loss tally by Bomb and Fighter Group as well as Damaged statistics. Andrews and Adams "The Mighty Eighth Combat Chronology" takes it one step farther and cites every combat loss in which the a/c did not return or crashed or ditched for total loss along with a/c serial no., Squadron, Command pilot, loss location, suspected cause, and MACR number.

With those three you can get very good evidence of Victory Credit Award to claim for LW in actual comparison, side by side, day by day from 1942 to May 1945. Make your own judgments rather than depend on what somebody else 'thinks'.

drgondog said:

With those three you can get very good evidence of Victory Credit Award to claim for LW in actual comparison, side by side, day by day from 1942 to May 1945. Make your own judgments rather than depend on what somebody else 'thinks'.

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You can also save yourself a lot of leg work by getting hold of the relevant publications, often by the authors cited above. A war diary type of approach (as adopted by Caldwell et alter) will usually give you the figures for both claims and losses, extracted from the various sources, on a mission by mission basis.
Cheers
Steve

Its a little off topic but I hope you forgive me. I was once in the NA and came across these letters. I find it fascinating that with the war far from won, they found time to look at a letter from a group of informed civies and it made its way to Churchill.

Edit - Sorry everyone I forgot to check the dates. The two letters were not connected but I think will be interesting.

Thanks for the interesting material Glider - from the National Archives I take it?

Do you have a document number? That might help.

I believe everyone overclaimed due to fog of war. Some might have been self-serving, but they were in the extreme minority. I also do not believe the claims of people who SAY they have investigated and found the claims to be 3 : 1, 5 : 1. or whatever. Their writing is as biased as writing the other way.

Most of the records to confirm kills or losses are very hard to find or are, in fact, lost in some cases, and the people who claim to be experts have mostly not proven to be so with time.

The US Navy and US Arny Air Forces did sutdies immediately after the war and came up with awarded victory lists as well as loss lists. I have not seen the equivalent from the UK, Germany, Japan, the USSR, Italy, or anyone else. The reason the US reports are criticized so much is they EXIST and offer a target.

Try to FIND the same for the other combatants ... you can't. So it's easy to criticize from the point of view that you believe your country and doubt all others.

I do NOT believe the services of any country were very interested in kills because they could track losses for the enemy. That would only make sense if the accurately knew production by the enemy. They were interested in tracking the cost of war for both sides and making their side look better. Some just wanted to know what was going on, but they were in minority who helped win the war, not the majority who wanted to raise morale and help their side with publicity rather than action.

I am reminded of a poem from the 1967 Egypt-Israeli war ...

Gamal, Gamal, bright as a camel, how does your battle go?
With shot up tanks, shot up ranks, and shot down MiG's in a row.
Gamal, Gamal, brains of enamel, why do you claim success?
Despite defeats and major retreats, we might as well win in the press!

That is from Mad Magazine in 1967 or 1968, I forget which ... but applies today to most wars or "actions."

The usual ratio for fighter to fighter combat of over claiming was between 2:1 to 3:1. It varied according to circumstances. Big 'furball' fighter combat generated the biggest over claims, for obvious reasons.
Individuals varied. Some definitely honestly over claimed, eg the plane was damaged and got away. There are quite a few cases of under claiming. Some, sadly, made things up.

This was in all sides. Luftwaffe, RAF, USAAF, et al.

The bombers over claimed to ridiculous levels, often in the 10:1 or even 20:1 levels, often higher. A lot of that was 'honest' in the sense that 50 gunners (eg in USAAF attacks) all fired at one plane it got hit and went down ... and all 50 claimed it. Therefore one plane taken out and 50 kills were registered.

The most accurate claims, by any side, of the entire war was the Luftwaffe night fighters. Helped of course by the fact that the actual wrecks of downed bombers could be counted. Even RAF night fighters were not that good because some went down in the Channel, some got home after diving though clouds (though they were still very accurate by any day standards).

RV Jones recounts that when he interviewed Kammhuber he congratulated him on the accuracy of his night fighters claims.

By and large, within reasonable levels of accuracy (say +- 10%) the majority of Luftwaffe day Experten claims were pretty good. Helped of course by the fact that the Luftwaffe had geared itself around such people, so normal pilots were just there to watch, admire and cover their leaders backsides. What good that did strategically and tactically is a matter of argument.

Stephen Bungey's book on Alamein is scathing about Marsaille, not about the fact that he shot down a lot of obsolete Hurricanes and P-40s, just that the Luftwaffe never did their job properly. While he, aided by the rest of his mates, ran up incredible scores ... RAF bombers .. untouched .... hammered German soldiers. And people wonder why Rommel was so scathing about the Luftwaffe.

There was lot more to the failure of the Luftwaffe than just individual plane performance and production numbers.

Good stuff, I've never seen those before. It reinforces the emphasis, particularly by the Americans in this case, on aircraft destroyed.
Cheers
Steve