Most successful Allied fighter in the MTO

[Milosh]

I never said there wasn't over claiming, be it intentional or unintentional. You mentioned strafing sands dunes, and I told you one reason why they did that.

Claim: one sand dune shadow.

 

[altsym]

I'm sure a few planes ended up being 'shadows on a dune'.

 

[OldSkeptic]

You haven't bothered to read all my posts.

It is not an attempt to explain anything. The cultures of different military organisations are different, what's wrong with that? The Luftwaffe award system is just one obvious example of this. There are many reasons why some Luftwaffe pilots achieved such high totals and I have not entered into any discussion on that at all.

I said in my original post and repeated at least once that all pilots in all air forces over claimed. It is almost inevitable given the nature of air fighting. Some cheated. There is nothing new or controversial in that.

What's your opinion of the well documented case of JG 27's "experten schwarm" ?

As for my other cited example, where are Welter's Mosquitos?

I could cite many more. I could show you examples of "cluster claiming" around landmark numbers. One night fighter expert claimed six on one night to get to one such number. I'm not naming him or giving the number because that would seem to be ace bashing and that is not the point I'm trying to make.

On the allied side for every 100 tanks claimed destroyed by the RAF's 2nd TAF only 1 could be confirmed on the ground. Now that's over claiming on a spectacular scale.

Steve

Everyone over claimed. Often quite honestly. The gunner in a US bomber fires at (along with 50 others) a German fighter, it blows up and he claims it, so does the other 50.
In fighter to fighter stuff, you fire at a another fighter it has smoke coming out of it and you claim at least a damage, maybe a probable, some claim a kill. But it is just the genuine characteristics when the other pilot opens it up to full and belches a lot of smoke.

Galland mentions one episode when he was caught by a bunch of Spits, couldn't get away and tried a desperation move, fired all his guns. The smoke from them convinced the other fighters that he had been hit (and probably made claims) and left him and he got away.

The bigger the groups of planes meeting and fighting each other, the bigger the over claiming.
Bader's 'big wings' were famous for this. Made amazing claims at the time (and for political reasons were accepted). After war analysis showed that they lost more planes than they shot down.

A good example of this is in the film "Battle of Britain', with the unescorted bomber attack from Norway on the British northern areas.
Unfortunately, for them, they were detected and hit by a squadron of Spits. In the film you see one guy claiming a kill, describes, sure he got it .. and was told he had a quarter of a kill. (maybe a third). Because everyone had attacked that one.

Combat, actually firing your guns, happened in (on average) 2 second moments, then you broke off (otherwise you were now a target, the one's that didn't never came back). Not a lot of time to be sure to anything.

The most accurate claims of the entire air war was probably the German night fighters, every one had to be verified by actual wreckage. And their reported claims were very close to actual losses.

Overall though (roughly) fighters over claimed against other fighters by between 2:1 to 3:1. On all sides. Though, of course, there were individual exceptions, both better and worse.
The ones overall (don;t forget the vast majority of pilots genuinely tried to be as correct as possible) that did the worst were where reward systems were tied to numbers. As in 'get this number of planes and you get a medal' sort of thing.

Marseille almost certainly got within 10% of his claims, which means an exceptional and honest level of accuracy by him. My criticism of him is not about his incredible skills, just the tactics and leadership at the time. Plus he was a real prima donna as a person, he was good and knew he was good and was driven by that from earlier experiences in the Luftwaffe (an officially disapproved love affair lost him a promotion).
Oh that 'throat ache' got to so many of them (excepting the night fighters, which were a technocratic elite).