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Killration,
I am value your knowledge and experience but I have one little question.
The often used "homeground"-argument has a degree of justification but one thing should be considered: The amount of confusion and wrong evaluation of airbattle situations should be nearly the same on both sides - or not? If yes, than the Germans would report at first a very highly overclaimed number of victories too if coming back from the show. Only the (later!) comparison with really existing wrecks and ground reports would show the number of errors. The result would be (necessarly!) an enormous high number of unconfirmed victory claims. That would be visible in any documents. BUT that is not the fact, the number of u/c is very low.
As well the claim "It is so easy th count the wrecks in the own garden" is incorrect because this garden is covered by forrest, lakes etc. etc. and it is often hard to find the leftover.
For All,
Gunnar reported recently about an air combat showing 2 losses in the documents on both sides. The Germans reported 3, but the Britons 16! That kind of reports is rather the rule than the exception! Now many of the "patriots" in former Allied countries are expecting 14 hidden German losses. At least these people expect the real result somewhere in the middle, e.g. near 8 or 9 German losses. I think that is ridicilous - despite of missing documents is it senseless and unjustified to multiply the know losses with factors like 2, 3 or 4 to satisfy the annoyed patriots.
BTW how is telling some forumites that an aircraft with some hits in the wing or similar unimportant hits has to be recorded as "lost"?
Also the number of (partly unrecorded) "walk aways" will never fit the "Allied needs" for claims.
Fighting 20 enemies a half hour is not very likely. The most air combats lasted only seconds or minutes. If I understood correct the 2 crews claimed 8 or 9 of 20? ???
I can not imagine that so many flying fools - inexperineced as pilots and tacticians - were serving with the Luftstreitkräfte.
Pilots of both sides could accidently run in bigger formations and some (but a minority) were searching such a challenge. Those pilots showed guts and were really bolt - it is already a good performance to survive that with a more little success than the often misinterpretad number of victories.
VBR
Hannes
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