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Originally Posted by Arsenal VG-33  On another note, the last thread on this forum about Pierre Clostermann descended into something of a free-for-all, French-bashing fest. Is this where the "negative vibes" come from? I also find it interesting that aces of the US/Uk/Ger are for some reason above scrutiny. For the record, other forums I've visited have mentioned that only very recently, some historians have called into question the "kills" claimed by Molders, Galland, and Marseilles. Should we look less upon them if it turns out they inflated their claims? I don't think so. |
It's virtually a given that WWII pilots actually shot down fewer a/c than they were credited with, because almost all air arms in general did at all times. As has been discussed, there are example of German units in certain periods with almost 100% accurate claims, but it wasn't the rule even for the Luftwaffe, and in some units and periods they were very far from it in fact, and the typical range for all WWII air arms was 25-50% (or higher or lower, I'm *roughly* generalizing).
But, the ratio's between credited victories and actual losses inflicted on the enemy varied a lot between air arms and between periods and theaters for a given air arm, so would presumably vary more still among individuals. And it's often hard to assess individual victories of WWII pilots. Usually there are A credits on the ace being examined's side, of which B are credits to the ace himself and C losses on the other side. A and C include all combats which can't be absolutely distinguished from one another, sometimes a lot of combats with A and C both big numbers. But C is almost always less than A, often a lot less. Some investigators will class all the ace's credits as 'verified' if B is less than C, IOW if the ace alone was credited with fewer planes than the other side lost in total; sometimes even over a whole front on a whole day, which is misleading to the point of nonsense IMO. The fair way would be some kind of prorating, the ace's verified victories would be B*(C/A).
I haven't actually read Clostermann's book. My main problem with it is the broad conclusions some people seem to draw about big picture issues based on Clostermann's small picture first hand accounts. Clostermann flew in a period and theater and air arm, w/ RAF '43-45 North Europe, where official credit accuracy relative to actual German losses was generally pretty good. But again it's often hard to determine that for an indivdual, and even if the credited victories don't check out, it doesn't by any means prove the pilot 'inflated' them, as in on purpose, though surely there were some who did. Also someone might describe kills in a book they weren't officially credited with, but official credit doesn't mean an enemy plane was always really shot down, nor does lack of official credit rule it out.
Marseilles' credits AFAIK correlate reasonably with Allied losses, and aren't so difficult to check because of relatively small scale of many of the combats. For example when he was credited with 17 victories in one day the best estimate AFAIK was somewhat less but not alot less (again would depend whether you credited him with every Allied loss; on a prorated basis it was a few to several less than 17 IIRC). On another forum somebody said that day's claims were grossly exaggerated, but eventually retreated to 'oh that's just what I heard'. You are right, there was many agenda driven analyses of WWII air combat that appear on the web, alongside objective ones, but again the methodology issues make it challenging to conduct and hard to compare analysis of individual pilots scores even without agendas. Better IMO to start with average accuracy of credits for whole air arms in various theaters and periods.
Joe
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