Over-claiming; who were the biggest culprits and how did they get away with it?

tyrodtom said:

You do understand the concept of propaganda don't you ? It's not put out FOR the Generals, Admirals, Field Marshals and such, it put out BY them.

It takes a pretty dumb General to believe his own propaganda, some may seem a little dense to us now, but they weren't stupid.

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and the only General I can think of that would fit that criteria would be Goering. While he dished out the propaganda, there were times when he actually believed it.

As far as BoB, the German intel were telling the brass that England was running out of Spitfires. One reason why Luftflotte 5 was used on 15 Aug because they truly believed there weren't enough defending fighters in that area of Britain. Big mistake.

There are two types of overclaiming.

1 Claiming aircraft destroyed which were not or which were in fact attacked and claimed by several pilots. This was endemic to all Air Forces and is the reason for the institution of the various claims procedures by various combatants. You could call it "honest" overclaiming. These were claims made in good faith.The vast majority of overclaiming falls into this category.

2 Claiming aircraft destroyed when (sometimes) there hadn't even been an encounter. This is dishonest overclaiming. There are well documented cases of this,particulary in the Luftwaffe. There are reasons for this which someone touched on above.

Naming names simply leads to arguments but in the German system there were certain "landmark" numbers of victories and the pattern of claiming around these landmarks can be quite enlightening.

Cheers

Steve

You've got a formation of bombers attacked by several fighters.
Maybe 50 different gunners fired on fighters, maybe 75 people saw a fighter explode.
Did they all see the same fighter explode, and viewed from different angles ? Or was it several fighters that exploded at different times in the fight ?
During the heat of battle i'd bet few, if any, gunners had time to note the time and write it down. The fighter may blow up immediately on being fired at, or be quite a distance off before it shows any result from being hit.

It's a problem of fantastic porportion to the debriefing officers, do they award each gunner a partial score, when it's going to be impossible to know who shot at which fighter, who got good hit's, who just got hits that did no real harm, and who missed completely ? So if you wanted to give partial credits, you don't even know who to devide the credits between.
To keep moral up, and keep the gunners enthusiastic for shooting at everything they awarded each gunner a full credit, knowing the total credits greaty exceeded the number actually shot down.

whilst we have all heard of outright dishonest claiming and propaganda, the vast majority of overclaims come simply from the fog of war,
heres a fancifull but possible example, say plane A engages plane B scores hits and sees B flip over and spin down apparently out of control, he has no time to watch this aircraft all the way down, he would'nt last ten minutes if he did, so he assumes a kill!
plane B however although holed, has been recovered by it's pilot and is attempting to escape when plane C oblivious to what has just happened attacks plane B sending it down again this time damaged and trailing smoke, now we have two guys who have engaged the same plane but have both claimed, plane B in the meantime is limping off looking for somewhere to force land when plane D sticks his nose in and blows the tail off sending it crashing into a woods, pilot D now also claims a kill having seen his victim crash!

that may seem a bit far fetched but after reading many encounter reports and sunsequent published losses, im pretty sure this kind of thing happened a lot, especially to bombers which take a lot of punishment!

tyrodtom said:

It's a problem of fantastic porportion to the debriefing officers

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There's a rather nice little scene in the Battle of Britain film in which an over enthusiastic young RAF pilot explains to the intelligence officer how he shot down an enemy aircraft only to be somewhat deflated,being told that several others have claimed the same aircraft.

It was as you say an impossible problem and all sides claims were substantially exaggerated,despite the claims procedures designed to avoid just that.

Steve

Makes one wonder how bad it would have been without the bureaucratic claims procedures!

SPEKTRE76 said:

I would like to know what the 'real' numbers are for Erich Hartmann. He has 352 'confirmed' kills. I'm wondering about the un-official kills. Maybe he has close too 400?

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We'll never know for Hartmann or any of the others. By any standards Hartmann was an exceptional combat pilot and that's what matters.

Cheers

Steve

Please understand that with this post I am only passing on what I read, or what I honestly believed I read:

The "Bloody Shambles" trilogy seemed to suggest that the AVG might have been willfully over claiming kills. (Admittedly there was a financial incentive to do so.) Apparently it was felt that perhaps the AVG was double-claiming RAF kills, so much so that a sit-down was arranged between Chennault and whomever was the British General in-charge of RAF and Commonwealth air assets.

On the Japanese side it was claimed by the authors that at least one Sentai (?) habitually over claimed as a face-saving measure, with a specific Sgt being particularly egregious.

That line from "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence" comes to mind (even though I've come to hate it a little bit for it's abuse in invoking 'the good lie' especially in the recent past):
"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend".

I wonder how many unit histories, log books and so forth was lost during some of the more chaotic periods of WW2.
Like during the fall of France, Poland, the British withdrawal from Greece, fall of the Phillippines, Russian records from early Barbarosa, Japanese records from Rabaul, etc.
A lot of the records from those periods were lost or incomplete, and what we've got now might be suspect.

I've read a history or log of a unit I was in, and either it or I have a faulty recall. Exact dates and numbers can get altered very easily without anyone intending deception.

CobberKane said:

Which Air Forces and individuals told the biggest porkies [...]

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The other guys. Isn't that always the right answer?

buffnut453 said:

Depends on how you define propaganda. In the strictest sense, it is "outward facing" communication to the public and/or enemy to paint a better/stronger picture of your abilities/power. However, as noted previously, there are situations where internal reporting gets inflated because someone wants to look good in front of their boss (the "Battle of Britain" movie makes quite a big deal out of this). For this latter scenario, it's not really propaganda but it is entirely feasible that senior officers might be presented with inaccurate or misleading assessments of an enemy's strength (as alluded to in my earlier post). That said, pretty much all generals don't take intelligence assessments at face value, indeed many prefer to be their own intelligence officer.

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A good example of a situation where airmen reported what they wanted to see and commmand believed them because they were hearing what the they wanted to hear; British night bombing circa 1943. Bombercrews gleefully reported the German war machine being bombed to rubble, Bomber Command gleefully accepted what they were hearing beccause proponents of the strategy had their own barrows to push. Even after careful anaysis of results demonstrated that they were bleeding themselves white in the night skys over Europe for virtually no return, many in Bomber command refused to believe it. Similarly, even though it was obvious that VIII bomber claims against LW fighters were highly inflated, undoubtedly those die hard supporters of the self protecting bomber box use such figures to prop up their own positions.

A good example of a situation where airmen reported what they wanted to see and commmand believed them because they were hearing what the they wanted to hear; British night bombing circa 1943. Bombercrews gleefully reported the German war machine being bombed to rubble, Bomber Command gleefully accepted what they were hearing beccause proponents of the strategy had their own barrows to push. Even after careful anaysis of results demonstrated that they were bleeding themselves white in the night skys over Europe for virtually no return, many in Bomber command refused to believe it. Similarly, even though it was obvious that VIII bomber claims against LW fighters were highly inflated, undoubtedly those die hard supporters of the self protecting bomber box use such figures to prop up their own positions.


That I cannot agree with, at least in part. The destruction of hamburg was real enough, described by the germans themselves as catastrophic. The destruction meted out out on German Industry was about 18% of its potential in 1943, and the germans were being forced to expend something between 37-50% of their remaining military potential (ie their military fiscal budget) on various forms of air defence, be it flak, ammunition, airborne systems, or ground detection. Close to a million men were engaged in air defence, either part time or full time, and up to a million Germans were rendered homeless in the war overall. Sure, the bomber offensive cost the British something like 12% of their military budget, and 60000 lives of highly trained airmen. Ill not deny the cost was high. But to say it was a mere propaganda excercise is just plain wrong. If it was, then the Germans sure bought it, as they expended ever increasing amounts of their meagre resources trying to stem the tide.

Wheree the bomber offensive took a hit, was in designating Berlin as the primary target after the smashing success of Hamburg and the ruhr Valley campaigns. Heree there were a series of costly battles that really were effectively defeats for BC. If thats what you are referring to, I can aomewhat accept. If , as your post suggests, you are referring to the whole campaign, then the various responses by the major players, including the germans themselves, suggest completely the opposite. Along with the findings of some pretty substantial post war investigations which many post war revisionists now seek to discredit by some very questionable means and on very shaky bases

CobberKane said:

A good example of a situation where airmen reported what they wanted to see and commmand believed them because they were hearing what the they wanted to hear; British night bombing circa 1943. Bombercrews gleefully reported the German war machine being bombed to rubble, Bomber Command gleefully accepted what they were hearing beccause proponents of the strategy had their own barrows to push. Even after careful anaysis of results demonstrated that they were bleeding themselves white in the night skys over Europe for virtually no return, many in Bomber command refused to believe it. Similarly, even though it was obvious that VIII bomber claims against LW fighters were highly inflated, undoubtedly those die hard supporters of the self protecting bomber box use such figures to prop up their own positions.

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Did BC crews make claims about the destruction of Germany's cities, or did they report how close to their aiming point they got? They may have reported observing fires and explosions, but at nigh they could no way devine how much damage was being done.

BC relied on recce aircraft to check the damage of raids. It's how they determined that they weren't doing much, if any, damage in 1941.

A small part of the problem in determining claims is the standard by which each side considered a 'kill' - each had a different system; some considered an aircraft destroyed on the ground as a 'kill', while others - the RAF, for example - did not.

As for verifying whether a claim is true or not, a really hard one to quantify at the time, or even since. In the UK a lot of archaeology has been done on known aircraft crash sites, with a lot of rewriting history as a result. Overclaiming by accident was almost inevitable in a crowded sky. Also, propaganda had its purposes; on all sides, civilian morale suffered enormously during the war, especially those that lived through constant bombing. Both sides reported the success of their fighters and bombers over the radio and cinema, no doubt embellished for public consumption. This is how, post war, the Spitfire was believed to the the aeroplane that 'won' the Battle of Britain; it was held as being the pinnacle of an RAF pilot's acheivment to fly the service's best fighter, and that's how the public saw it, thanks to propaganda.

Germany's problem during the Battle of Britain was a lack of intelligence, which led to the hierarchy believing what was being reported back after combat; Goering would have put two and two together and come up figures for what he perceived to have been RAF numbers; I doubt there was any deliberate ploy of the Germans to overclaim during the Battle of Britain; what purpose would that serve, when the object of your efforts was to destroy the force you are encountering? Likewise, Bomber Command's efforts over Germany, pretty hard to state the raid was a success or unsuccessful when the only means of doing so is through combat reports and flash photography.

wuzak said:

Did BC crews make claims about the destruction of Germany's cities, or did they report how close to their aiming point they got? They may have reported observing fires and explosions, but at nigh they could no way devine how much damage was being done.

BC relied on recce aircraft to check the damage of raids. It's how they determined that they weren't doing much, if any, damage in 1941.

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At some point during the war all Bomber Command aircraft started taking a photoflash picture on bombs away, that was to verify where they dropped ( early, late, wrong target, sea) so there was no fudging on that point.

This is kinda like doping in sports, some do it, some don't, you'll never find out till they pop positive or someone rats them out.

Oh geez, I thought this was about income tax deductions.............

Sorry, I'll go home now.

tyrodtom said:

At some point during the war all Bomber Command aircraft started taking a photoflash picture on bombs away, that was to verify where they dropped ( early, late, wrong target, sea) so there was no fudging on that point.

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It wasn't initially fool proof. I'll let Howard Lees,a photographic officer with No.8 PFF Group explain how he addressed the problem early on for the Pathfinders.

"The other one was night photography which I regret to say I criticised it on my training session at the School of Photography at Farnborough. I had the audacity to say 'That is a bit Heath Robinson, isn't it?' I was very firmly put in my place and they said, 'That's how it says in the book and that's how you do it!' Well it was just stupid because you could not possibly say that the centre of a photograph was where the bomb strike. Because it was all done by timing. The timing was upset by weather conditions, by evasive action to avoid flak and the behaviour of the photo flash. Now the photo flash was a device about 40 inches long and about 4½ inches diameter which was set to explode at point 6 (.6) of the height of the aircraft with a trail angle of 60° of the angle of view of the lens - flash and illuminate the ground and when the photograph was taken, the aircraft came back and the photograph was printed. The interpreters plotted the centre of the photograph as the point of bomb strike. Well of course the aircrew were very indignant indeed! They knew jolly well they'd hit the target or said they had but the centre of the photograph was probably some fields, about three miles away due the fact that it had been taken at an oblique angle. I went to the Station at Graveley, and went over the bombing range in daylight to drop a flash and see how it misbehaved because I had my own theories about it. Now the Halifax has a door which is curved partly underneath the fuselage and is ideal for hanging one's head down outside to see what goes on, which I did - very securely tied in! And looked underneath the aircraft and watched the flash emerge from the other side and as soon as it came out into the slipstream it cartwheeled. Now the flash is operated by a propeller on the back which has a pin through the shaft. The shaft of the propeller had a hole in it with a pin through it. And so that pin is attached to a lanyard which is secured in the aircraft. And when the flash falls out of the flare chute that taughtens - pulls the pin out, leaves the propeller free to revolve in the slipstream. And when it is fully released and flies off, it releases the firing pin to start the fuse which is preset according to the prescribed bombing height of the aircraft.

But it didn't quite work out like that. Because when this cartwheeled the propeller would go that way but when the flash was going through the air that way the propeller would go back the other way. So the timing was completely upset and to plot the centre of the photograph was just stupid."

Cheers

Steve

wuzak said:

Did BC crews make claims about the destruction of Germany's cities, or did they report how close to their aiming point they got? They may have reported observing fires and explosions, but at nigh they could no way devine how much damage was being done.

BC relied on recce aircraft to check the damage of raids. It's how they determined that they weren't doing much, if any, damage in 1941.

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I think I was being a bit loose with my dates, here. Post 1943 the Brits definitely got better and better at night bombing and it undoubtedly caused a lot of destruction. However, before that time the effects were greatly overestimated, largely due to the claims of the aircrew. I don't recall the name of the report that found the campaign up to that time had been almost entirely ineffective, but I'm sure someone out ther is better informed.