American bomber gunner claims are even worse.
I would generally agree but would point out with 3 or 4 bombers shooting at a single fighter its easy to make the honest mistake of thinking it was "your" guns that did it. Fighter vs bomber it was easier to tell.
I believe much of the reason the JAAFs claims were accepted was to upp morale on the home front. Then again with the terrible losses suffered by the 8'th AF in Europe it could be argued kill claims were allowed to be exaggerated for morale reasons too. I just read a book that had the remembrances of some of the very few JAAFs fighter pilots that survived the war, most of whom started fighting in China and somehow survived the entire conflict. They themselves knew at the time their own kill claims by their Air Forces were ridiculous.
But they had the added problem of fighting while outnumbered against extremely well built enemy fighters, most of whom when hit were probably able to make it back to a CV or strip. There was no way they could have waited to see if the Hell Cats or Corsairs fell into the sea because they would have been dead had they waited to do so. American fighter pilots exaggerated kills also.
Again if anyone has a link to a factual loss list of 29s against various JAAFs fighters I'd love to see it. It was common for the Japanese Govt. to claim 100 29s shot down in a single attack but I doubt 100 were shot down by their fighters in the entire war.
