Spitfire mk VB/Seafire vs Zero

Soren
read the tread, I don't bring the Ta-152 to this thread,

Juha

Glider said:

It would be nice to know if there were any gun camera films to help sort this out.

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It might help, but in my observation gun camera shots don't always sort things out, even when the actual pictures still exist and are known to correspond to a particular action. I have in mind right now 2-3 different sometimes published gc shots among 7 USAF F-94's credited to Soviet MiG-15's in Korea in the same combat. The clearest shot shows a Marine F9F, which were the actual opponents. There were no other opponents, and just 1 F9F was downed: extensive evidence in declassified records up to originally 'top secret' level. The shots were of the same plane, but you can't tell looking at them. Not fakes AFAIK, but inadvertent duplicate credits using gun camera. And while the Soviet policy seemed to require gc shots of kill credits, only 2-3 of the 7 official credits in that combat have known gc shots.

Also many surviving gc shots just show a plane in the aiming reticle of another, not its definite destruction (true of the clearest shot in the series mentioned above). As policy some AF's required image of a bail out or disintegration, but rigorous enforcement of such rules was another matter. Other AF's had a policy of allowing interpretation of non-definite gc evidence to award a kill, but the policy either way was only one variable, the practice could differ either way.

So, the fact that gc shots once existed for a combat, but we no longer have the images (vast majority of cases) doesn't help much IMO in evaluating a claim. There's no way to tell anymore what level of rigor was really used in assessing destruction and weeding out duplicates.

You need the other side's records to evaluate fighter combat IMO. If you can't get them or believe them, you just can't do it accurately, in general with some exceptions (eg. still existing clear images of single Japanese targets of single USN PB4Y's hitting the water or totally enveloped in flame).

Joe

Juha said:

Soren
read the tread, I don't bring the Ta-152 to this thread,

Juha

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It was actually claidemore, my apologies.

Soren said:

Bill,

The cause behind every other Ta-152 loss is known except that single one. And it absolutely couldn't have been caused by enemy action as both Willy and his wingman saw him just dive out of formation and into the woods, no tracers, smoke, enemy a/c or damage to Stattler's a/c was observed.

So that leaves only a few possible explanations, either he fell asleep, got a heart attack (rare yes, but when have you ever heard of this before besides this ??) or mechanical malfunction (Highly unlikely as he didnt respond).

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I don't want to hijack the thread.. we can pick up later how any knows what the operational statistics and operational inventory was from beginning to war's end?