Allied victories vs. German records

Unlike many on this thread I do not believe there is a whole lot of middle ground on this. It is impossible to "close the gap" between 272 and 0 in a way that establishes both that the German records are remotely accurate and that the Allied aces, as a group, were not a bunch of pathological liars or simple-minded fools.

Sort of puts the Bishop argument in a different light, doesn't it? Attacking Bishop, for many (not all) on this forum, is simply a proxy for attacking all Allied aces. They're simply too cowardly to frame it in this manner. Much easier to go after the much-maligned Bishop.

Does this mean that Al should thank me for starting this thread?

J

Well, you could argue that it moves the point from "Bishop is a fraud", to "Most Allied aces, including Bishop, are frauds". Not sure Al would be impressed!

[Barrett]

It wouldn't be a Claims Thread if I didn't note that of the 272 victories credited to Claxton, Collishaw, Dallas, Kinkead, McElroy, McKeever, and Thompson, 137.7 were assessed captured or destroyed...

[Ron_F]

oops,
i read it too quickly, he was using the ATT book only im guessing...
doh!

anyways, ive said my peace on the matter...let others decide... lol

Ron

[Billy_Bishop]

Thank you J!

VBR,

Al Lowe

[wings]

The Grub Street writers did not try to confirm all of the victories of all of the British pilots.

Let's be honest about this. You can study the German records for the next 100 years and you're only going to close the 0 for 272 gap very marginally. On a thread a number of months ago, Hannes Tager agreed with me on this point. You might move someone like Collishaw from 0 for 60 to 5 for 60. The problem is NOT primarily a lack of research, it's a gross fundamental discrepancy between Allied claims and German records, and there is no point in pretending otherwise. The only issue is which side was cooking the books.

[rammjaeger]

If anybody would take the effort and find out how many of the German losses could not be matched to Allied claims because of lacking report of times or location or other causes than he could get also a more realistic picture of the real difference between claims and losses. And he could guess the amount of potential successful verifications of victories after future researches. Additional nobody would get the wrong idea that ever anybody was trying to match ALL Allied claims to German losses.

The comparisons of totals from Graemes claims lists with German loss numbers (which Gunnar and me were supplying if I remember rightly) in earlier threads were much more informative than accidently picking out single names of pilots which were never getting an attention like McCudden, Mannock - and Bishop.

The gap between claims and losses is giant but the iterpretation different. There can not be a doubt that the majority of the difference is caused by an inhomogeneous and unrealistic system of victory confirmation (similar reliable as Japanese airwar reports in WWII) and only a minority caused by lacking or often only undiscovered German loss data like that for the Gotha-claim by Nungesser.

Obvously the realistic evaluation of the own success was "cooked" earlier and more thoroughful by Allied reports than German reports were "cooked" in revolutionary events or British bombings in WWII.

BTW soft rules (whatever the subject of the rules is and on which field of human life these rules are applied) are resulting ALWAYS in tries to soften also the application of these already soft rules. People will always try to interpret soft rules even softer. That is part of the human nature and should be the subject for some thoughts as well.

Basta.

That is the first time I have seen a list of claims against German records. It works out to 11.33%. Has anyone checked German claims against allied losses? If so,what was the result? Obviously, something is wrong with those figures. The British couldn't have been that incompetent, or such flat out liars.