Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aircraft and Vehicles => Topic started by: SFRT - Frenchy on August 29, 2002, 07:44:44 AM
-
Galant's kill score (http://members.aol.com/geobat66/galland/coppens.htm)
Alternate Views on Adolf Galland's WW2 Kills
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Sirs, I am submitting the enclosed material in response (more or less) to J. W. Urwin's fine article on Belgian Ace, Willy G. Coppens in the January 1981 issue of Air Classics Magazine, and to Thomas A. Young's comment in the June 1981 "Airlines" commentary column. Both speculated as to whether the last and greatest of Belgium's WWI aces was still alive. Well, the enclosed letter and related material should serve to show that at age eigthy-nine, Baron Coppens d'Houthulst is alive and indeed kicking.
Mr. Coppens asked me to translate a letter he'd previously published in a French magazine, and requested that it be submitted to an appropriate American journal for publication. I thought Air Classics Magazine appropriate since it has, in the past, done articles on the Luftwaffe aces, it has published an article recently on Belgium's air war in May 1940 (Michael Terlinden's "Eighteen Days of Hell", Air Classics 1978 Yearbook), and because Coppens himself has been the subject of Mr. Urwin's recent article.
There is no doubt about the controversial nature of Mr. Coppens' subject - although Terlinden's Eighteen Days of Hell article supports some of his arguments - and a strong anti-German bias shows it. But keep in mind, as a Belgian, Mr. Coppens has seen his country occupied and ravaged twice by the Germans ... that might tend to color one's feelings a bit.
I do hope you publish this direct translation of Mr. Coppens' own words, so that I can report to him that a promise has been kept. But in any case, this should answer the question as to whether he is around to read Mr. Urwin's story.
Sincerely,
Jon Guttman
Palisades, New York
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WHY DOWNGRADE THE ACES OF FRANCE?
by Baron Willy Coppens de Houthulst
Reading in Paris Match Magazine of 20 December, 1975, an article devoted to two aces of the 1939-45 War, one English and one Nazi - Wing Commander R. R. Stanford Tuck whom Paris Match credits with thirty-five aerial victories (he officially counts twenty-nine, according to the list of the "Top Scoring Fighter Pilots Serving with the RAF during World War Two" which the RAF high commander sent to me), and General Adolf Galland who is attributed 104 - I regret once again, to see thus depreciated the aces of France - - their score belittled in proclaiming the unbelievable results of the aces of Hitler and of the conceited Goering.
In his book, Aerial Combat, Air Vice Marshal Johnny Johnson, who reported thirty-eight official victories during the 1939-45 war, remarks not without irony that during the Battle of Britain "the RAF fighters claimed an average of three victories for two planes actually shot down, but among the Germans it was six for two," a leveling having been carried out after the war.
In eleven published articles, I myself demonstrated a counter-truth of Adolf Galland, taking the pains to send them to his official address in Bonn. And the ex-general Galland, not admitted into the new Federal German Army (so the ambassador to Brussels tells me) since he returned from Argentina in 1952 after seven years of voluntary exile, Galland could not reply to my articles confining himself, as an excuse for everything, to writing to the General Delegate of the French Aces Association that I had it in for him. Would I be the only one?
In 1944 General Galland didn't protest at all -as did his compatriot and brother-in-arms, Walter Nowotny -when Hitler had fifty escapees from Stalag Luft III, unfortunately retaken by the Gestapo, executed. When Hitler gave an order, he always found some Germans to obey them. And Goering, ace of 1914-18, was nothing but a valet!
What to think of Galland? Returned from Argentina, received in Federal Germany as a hero by all who kept pride in the Third Reich, he flattered his conquerors, French and English. Marcel Julliand remarks in his book The Battle of Britain that Adolf Galland rings of such utterances - anti- Nazi - "when the war was over and Goering was dead."
In return, taking pen in hand, Adolf Galland cynically slandered the young Belgian aviators, describing the flight of a squadron of eight Hawker Hurricane fighters (forty-eight black, yellow and red cockades) attacked by he and his only wingman, Lt. Gustav Rodel, sole witness to the gold-plating of his general. Galland claimed to have shot down two of the runaways on the morning of 13 May 1940, the fourth day of the war in Belgium and a third Belgian Hurricane of a squadron of five, during the afternoon of the same day, the Belgian fighters never accepting combat despite their superiority in numbers.
This appears in the memoirs of ex-General Galland, published after his return from Argentina under the title whose French edition is prefaced by the aviator Emile Sternberg -the English edition reports these deeds, injurious to my countrymen, on the date of 12 May. The original German edition, describing the attack on the eight Belgians when he fired on one of them who took flight at that moment, says textually that "far from bringing help to their comrade, the seven others scattered to the four winds." Despite that, Galland caught the first in his diving descent and shot him down, then one of the seven others, shot down in its turn ... I would like Hitler's ace to make me a drawing, explaining how he did it, for our Hurricanes showed hardly less speed than his Messerschmitt.
My eleven articles had turned to account another argument, irrefutable. On 13 May 1940, the Belgian Air Force hadn't a single Hawker Hurricane left. Our other single-seaters were biplanes, which prevented any confusion.
On 9 May 1940, we still had eleven Hurricanes, all lined up on the field at Schaffen-lez-Diest, fifty kilometers from the frontier which the German Army crossed ten minutes after having destroyed nine Hurricanes on the ground in a surprise attack carried out by three German twin-engined planes flying at ground level, followed by combat planes and bombers circling at 2,000 meters. The last two were destroyed in the same manner, on the ground, the following afternoon, on the field at Beauvechain.
Then what would be the Hawker Hurricanes which General Galland claimed to have met in the Belgian sky on 13 May 1940? The Dutch didn't have any. And I challenge Galland to publish that they would be eight pilots of the RAF who took flight before him and his wingman -on 22 July 1966, the commandant of the Royal Air Force, Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Elworthy, figures in hand, proved to me, that three Hurricanes were not lost on 12 or 13 May 1940.
The conclusion asserts itself: these three Hurricanes must be deducted from Galland's score. Should one believe that there remain 101 undeniable victories?
In his memoirs, Hunters in the Sun, prefaced by Douglas Bader, twenty-victory ace who was hosted by General Galland in France when Bader was a prisoner in 1941, Air Vice Marshal Johnny Johnson explains the means employed by Hitler's and Goering's propaganda to inflate the successes of their aces: an Allied twin-engined bomber shot down counted for two "points" to the victor, a four-engined one as three. The points were doubled when victories were reported at night. Furthermore, the leaders of formations had their points augmented in function to the total obtained by the pilots they led into combat -that was often the case with General Galland.
This grocer's accounting explains the 352 "victories" counted to Erich Hartmann. And also the fact that it sufficed for General Galland to produce the witness of his wingman, a subaltern sharing points with his leader if a success was confirmed, likewise three in one day!
The French and Allied aces had no reason to yield before the crushing imaginary superiority of the Nazi fighters. The survivors of 1914-18 were wrong to confirm in their turn the exagerated records of our adversaries of the second war, in making them members of their association. The chivalric spirit is particularly laudable on condition that it does not allow deceit.
The French and English must keep for Rene Fonck with seventy-five aerial victories, to William Bishop who reported seventy-two, and to Georges Guynemer who fell after his fifty-third, the admiration that proud people have for their heroes.
Regards,
Baron Willy Coppens de Houthulst
-
:D :D :D :D :D
ROFLOL
:D :D :D :D :D
Frankly I don't give a damn about Galandts score or the reliability of status reports of the crushed Belgian Airforce.
The way of counting kills were too different to compare them.
But it is good to see, that there are whiners outside of AcesHigh.
-
"an Allied twin-engined bomber shot down counted for two "points" to the victor, a four-engined one as three. The points were doubled when victories were reported at night. Furthermore, the leaders of formations had their points augmented in function to the total obtained by the pilots they led into combat -that was often the case with General Galland.
This grocer's accounting explains the 352 "victories" counted to Erich Hartmann."
The article is stupid because it thinks the awards point system for medal counted towards the actual kill talley. How ignorant is this idiot?
-
Hi Frenchy,
I'd say that the doubts about the accuracy of Galland's combat record aren't particularly serious. Aerial combat records are generally inaccurate to a certain degree, and I'm sure Galland's is no exception, but there's no reason to assume it was deliberately faked.
There are some misunderstandings about victory counts in Coppen's letter:
The point count was mot equal to the victory count. It rewarded disciplined attacks on bomber formations and counted towards awards, but it did not replace kill counts. It wasn't used at the Eastern Front at all (so it never applied to Hartmann).
The victory counts announced by German propaganda were not equal to the total of the pilot's confirmed victories. Official confirmation took some time (sometimes months), so ad-hoc reporting would always be inaccurate anyway.
I think WW2 victories are much harder to verify than the WW1 victories were. All but 5 of Richthofen's victims are known by name and unit - I don't think such a degree of accuracy was possible with the greater numbers and much larger combat areas in WW2. (It's a bit ironic Coppen mentions Bishop - his famous "dawn patrol" kills were not even confirmed by a wingman, as far as I know.)
The Hurricane question remains unclear, but I don't think that files don't match each other is unique case, or limited to Luftwaffe claims.
Regards,
Henning (HoHun)
-
HoHun, I was going to mention the same thing regarding Bishop. The debate over the legitimacy of his kills (I believe he may have had two kills either witnessed or cross-referenced) still rages to this day. The crappy part about aerial victories is that not even the pilots could be absolutely certain.
-
WW1 victories were harder to verify. Often if the wreck didn't fall in friendly territory it couldn't be claimed.
Rickenbacker had 2 kills he claimed but couldn't get confirmed. Fonck has 75 confirmed but claimed about 120. Since Fonk flew a lot of solo missions deep behind enemy lines that's not entirely impossible (although he was also something of a braggart), compared to Richthofen's strict squadron-based flights mostly over friendly territory or over the lines where kills could almost always be confirmed.
Ball and Bishop also flew solo behind enemy lines a fair amount although the British/Canadians seemed more willing to count kills that weren't witnessed by friendly actions (Bishop was awarded the Victoria Cross for an action that no friendlies witnessed for example).
In general, kills were easier to get confirmed in WW2 than in WW1, thanks to features like gun cameras and stricter squad-based flying.
J_A_B
-
Hi Jab,
>In general, kills were easier to get confirmed in WW2 than in WW1, thanks to features like gun cameras and stricter squad-based flying.
I was merely aiming at the positive identification of the unit, aircraft and pilot after the war. Richthofen surely is the best-researched example (and he did much to establish his victim's identity personally), but I don't think it would be possible to reach a similar level of completeness for any WW2 ace with a comparable kill count.
Galland couldn't even find out reliably who had shot down Bader, though it certainly had been a pilot of his unit.
Regards,
Henning (HoHun)
-
Well, in the sense of identifying WHO your victims were, you're absolutely right..
BTW, what ever happened to the small silver victory trophies Richthofen had made for his first 60 or so kills?
J_A_B
-
Originally posted by GRUNHERZ
[BThe article is stupid because it thinks the awards point system for medal counted towards the actual kill talley. How ignorant is this idiot? [/B]
Perhaps not so ignorant. There has always been a general uneasiness that the point system spilled over into kill claims. Caldwell figures that German B-17 claims may be double the actual losses.
Frankly, I've never been able to believe that 100 Nazi pilots shot down 15,000 planes.
- oldman
-
The old guy seems inordinalty offended at the way that Galland described the scattering of the belgians. He should not be.
Doubting the accuracy of the German kill claims will get you no where. They have been checked and double checked and are in fact more accurate than allied kill claims.
The allies at the time knew that the germans were counting fairly accuratly. They didnt put a reward on Hartmans head for lying about how many russians he shot down..They put it there for acctually shooting them down.
They knew that at the channel coast 2 wings of germans were contesting dozens of wings of allies...they knew how many planes they were losing...
If the germans had been in the business of lying about kills they would have claimed far more kills durring the defence of the reich then they did. That was the place they needed the morale boost.
The russians have admitted to 44000 loses vs aircraft in ww2 I believe, 90 % of them were shot down by 10% of the pilots.. a stat that is pretty constant throughout the history of air warfare..
There is no conspiracy here. Just alot of enemies available to the top german pilots if they could stay alive and keep cherry picking...
-
"Frankly, I've never been able to believe that 100 Nazi pilots shot down 15,000 planes."
Why? Because they werent flying for a democratic, socialist or communist country? :D
Listen the big LW pilots were the most expereinced and most seasoned combat fliers in all of history. They fought for a very long time and achieved great success.
And yes it is plainly out of ignorance that the point system is ever thought of as a kill talley. The LW knew their own system very well, incredulous and jelous french/belgian postwar writers do not.
Erich Hartmann had 352 confirmed victories. No amount of whining by some ignorant french writer will ever change that. :D
-
I can barrely believe that the german victory/point system is so hard to understand.
It works pretty simple.
The pilot claims a victory, if this victory is confirmed he will be credited with 1 victory to his score.
Medals and rank were given in the LW mainly due to victory scores.
But as war progressed the germans realized (especially against 4-eng-buffs) that also just the damaging of such a hard target was a success that should be regonized.
And so they introduced the point system.
1 point: fighter kill (counts as victory), final destruction of a 2-/4-eng-buff (counts as victory), formation-shoot-out of a 2-eng-buff(does NOT count as victory)
2 points: 2-eng-buff kill (counts as victory), formation-shoot-out of a 4-eng-buff(does NOT count as victory)
3 points: 4-eng-buff kill (counts as victory)
So you can see pilots could be credited with POINTS for damaging multi-eng-buffs, but would not than get a victory for that.
So Experts in breaking off B17 formations by damaging multiple B17 could earn points, so that they could progress in rank and earn medals, but could in extreme cases (which never took place i guess) score points without ever getting a single victory to their credit.
-
Originally posted by GRUNHERZ
"Frankly, I've never been able to believe that 100 Nazi pilots shot down 15,000 planes."
Why? Because they werent flying for a democratic, socialist or communist country? :D
Nope. Mainly because it was so contrary to the experience of every other country's pilots. Allies, Axis, you name 'em, the top aces everywhere else maxxed out at 100 kills or so - and most weren't even close to that. Nazis claimed to have 100 guys in this category. Granting that the situations were different everywhere, I think this pushes the believability envelope.
Listen the big LW pilots were the most expereinced and most seasoned combat fliers in all of history. They fought for a very long time and achieved great success.
And yes it is plainly out of ignorance that the point system is ever thought of as a kill talley. The LW knew their own system very well, incredulous and jelous french/belgian postwar writers do not.
Erich Hartmann had 352 confirmed victories. No amount of whining by some ignorant french writer will ever change that. :D
I'm open to re-education. Seems to me that Caldwell, the guy who wrote the JG 26 series, has probably done as good an investigation into Nazi kills as anyone else. According to him, there AREN'T ANY "confirmed" kills, because "at the end of the war, the Luftwaffe destroyed its master list of victory confirmations." JG26, p. 405. What you have left is kill claims submitted to the RLM by the various geschwader.
I note also that Caldwell (p. 171) found that "[r]esearch for this book revealed that many pilots' "separation" claims were ultimately awarded as "victories"; occasionally claims by other pilots were allowed for the "final destruction" of the same aircraft. It is easy to see that the system led to claims duplication by a factor of as much as two."
That means, um, double, I think. He continues: "German claims for the destruction of heavy bombers (even when confirmed) are more difficult to reconcile with Allied losses than claims for any other aircraft type; it is probably that part of the explanation lies with the point system."
My own reading of German pilots' accounts - esp. during the 1944-45 period - certainly doesn't make me think that their claims were particularly accurate, in this period at least. Those guys were getting swarmed in many, if not most, of their fights, and were still claiming kills here and kills there. Check Wili Heilmann's book as an example. Heh heh. Note that his account of shooting down the American gliders is confirmed by Caldwell - at p. 233 - except that the gliders were on the ground (empty), were strafed by the Germans, and were claimed as kills.
Granting that the Russian skill level wasn't the same as the Western Allies', the Nazis were getting swarmed out there, too.
I would expect Johnnie Johnson, as a fellow fighter pilot, to call a spade a spade. He thought the German claims were grossly inflated.
So, all this is by way of saying that I'd love to see something - by someone who backs it up - that would make me think the Nazi pilots really were supermen (this would probably exclude Constable & Toliver, who don't back up their conclusions with actual investigation).
- oldman
-
Originally posted by Pongo
The russians have admitted to 44000 loses vs aircraft in ww2 I believe, 90 % of them were shot down by 10% of the pilots.. a stat that is pretty constant throughout the history of air warfare..
There is no conspiracy here. Just alot of enemies available to the top german pilots if they could stay alive and keep cherry picking...
I go into this a bit more in response to Grunherz, Pongo, but the Nazis claim that their top 100 guys shot down almost half of these Russian losses. I doubt that 100 pilots was 10% of the Luftwaffe fighter force during the course of the war.
- oldman
-
Originally posted by Naudet
So you can see pilots could be credited with POINTS for damaging multi-eng-buffs, but would not than get a victory for that.
So Experts in breaking off B17 formations by damaging multiple B17 could earn points, so that they could progress in rank and earn medals, but could in extreme cases (which never took place i guess) score points without ever getting a single victory to their credit.
Heh heh, Naudet. Theory v. practice. See my post to Grunherz. FWIW, I think the fact that the high command felt it necessary to introduce such a system indicates its willingness to go easy on claims.
- oldman
-
Oldman, what you are saying does not work. The allies were awarding partial kills and shared kills and squadron kills and kills for ac on the ground and kills for shooting down flying bombs...Killls by bomber gunners were vastly inflated.
The worst kill counters I have heard of were the Japanese in the solomons..the Japanese high command was sure they had whiped out the Henderson AC several times over just based on the kills they claimed. They were never even close.
Ignore Caldwell for a second and try to find numbers of Allied aircraft lost in ww2...and then look at the numbers of German pilots. Then consider that a small portion of pilots get the majority of kills in all wars for all counties. and you will see some allarming numbers available for the Germans. Given a simular number of targets and a simulare time to engage them the allies would have had 200kill + aces as well. there is no magic, it is just oppertunity, opertunity that the Germans had.
How many aircombats did David Mcambell participate in to shoot down 34? Aircraft...dozens at most..imagine letting him go at it for 5 long years against enemies with vast numerical supperiority.
he would have had lots more kills.
Our belgian fellow does not know what he is talking about. Even if there is some discrepency in one engagment vs the belgians, adolf Galland no matter what else he was..was a good fighter pilot and has been recognised as such by his adverseries.
one final note. the top 2 canadian spit pilots in malta shot down more planes between them in 6 months then all the canadian spitfire pilots in Britian during the same time. How..good pilots with opertunitiy. Had axis ac been available to them for 3 years in those numbers they would have been 200 kill aces or dead.
-
Yep one thing you left out of your arguments is that the kill/sortie rate between the top germans and top allies int that much different. The Germans just had more experience and time to fight.
And your constant references to all LW aces as nazis tells me you an axe to grind, ever heard of Nowotny or Molders, or Marsaille.
-
Hi Oldman,
>Nope. Mainly because it was so contrary to the experience of every other country's pilots. Allies, Axis, you name 'em, the top aces everywhere else maxxed out at 100 kills or so - and most weren't even close to that. Nazis claimed to have 100 guys in this category. Granting that the situations were different everywhere, I think this pushes the believability envelope
Look at the sortie/kill ratio, and you'll see that the difference becomes less pronounced. Look at the encounter/kill ratio, and the difference might actually vanish.
"[The Americans] normally went home after one hundred missions. If I would have been sent home after one hundred missions, I wouldn't have had any victories at all." (Walter Krupinski, 197 victories)
Here's an example for the asymmetry of air combat: Mike Spick, quoting the USAF "Saber measures" study, shows that in the month preceding D-Day, at a fighter sortie ratio of 2.9:1 the Luftwaffe scored 2.9 kills per sortie compared to 1.3 for the Allies. However, the Luftwaffe also lost 3.6 planes per sortie, compared to 1.0 for the Allies.
Casting this into a simple mathematical model which assumes all pilots of one side have equal abilities, and everyone who's shot down is killed, I arrive at the following results for this period:
Luftwaffe: 34500 sorties with a force of 1500 pilots
- 1 pilot with 5 kills
- 5 pilots with 4 kills
- 32 pilots with 3 kills
- 157 pilots with 2 kills
Allies: 97500 sorties with 7500 pilots
- 4 pilots with 3 kills
- 88 pilots with 2 kills
Now judging by these scores, the Luftwaffe clones seem to be much better pilots than the Allied clones - they have far more high-scoring pilots, and higher scores as well!
However, the truth is that even in he clone model, the Luftwaffe lost 1242 planes while inflicting just 975 losses on the Allies, and didn't deal out as well as it took. The scores of the aces - which in my example have absolutely nothing to do with skill - are really independend of the success of the opposing forces.
Regards,
Henning (HoHun)
-
Hi again,
>the Luftwaffe scored 2.9 kills per sortie compared to 1.3 for the Allies. However, the Luftwaffe also lost 3.6 planes per sortie, compared to 1.0 for the Allies.
This is per 100 sorties, of course.
Regards,
Henning (HoHun)
-
what about his claim that the mission against the belgian hurris was a deliberate lie. if this is true i think hes right in calling all the other victorys into question. if a guys willing to make up such a insulting lie to glorify himself he is obviously not to be believed.
now that is assuming the hurry scattering story is a deliberate lie.
anyone find the belgian guys facts to be wrong ?
-
Originally posted by Pongo
Killls by bomber gunners were vastly inflated.
Absolutely true. I suspect that the same factors that inflated gunner claims worked to inflate Luftwaffe claims. I'm not implying malice here - all of us recognize that keeping track of whether the enemy plane really crashed would not have been a priority when you were just trying to stay alive.
Ignore Caldwell for a second and try to find numbers of Allied aircraft lost in ww2...and then look at the numbers of German pilots. Then consider that a small portion of pilots get the majority of kills in all wars for all counties. and you will see some allarming numbers available for the Germans.
I don't have these stats. Plus I don't have any idea what the ratio of loss caused by flak, enemy a/c action, a/c malfunction, and oldman-style stupid flying would have been.
Given a simular number of targets and a simulare time to engage them the allies would have had 200kill + aces as well. there is no magic, it is just oppertunity, opertunity that the Germans had.
Not sure I agree. The Japanese had time and opportunity, and didn't come close. Johnnie Johnson flew almost continuously from 1941 through 1945 and had, what, 38 kills? Opportunity works both ways; seems to me that if you're getting swarmed you would have less chance of getting a kill than if you were the swarmer.
Our belgian fellow does not know what he is talking about. Even if there is some discrepency in one engagment vs the belgians, adolf Galland no matter what else he was..was a good fighter pilot and has been recognised as such by his adverseries.
No doubt Galland was a superior fighter pilot, and I don't think that the Belgian ace was saying anything else. He was questioning Galland's score, and by implication Galland's honesty in reporting his kills. So far as I can tell, the Belgian backed his contention up with research.
one final note. the top 2 canadian spit pilots in malta shot down more planes between them in 6 months then all the canadian spitfire pilots in Britian during the same time. How..good pilots with opertunitiy. Had axis ac been available to them for 3 years in those numbers they would have been 200 kill aces or dead.
The "or dead" part is significant, I think.
- oldman
-
Originally posted by GRUNHERZ
Yep one thing you left out of your arguments is that the kill/sortie rate between the top germans and top allies int that much different. The Germans just had more experience and time to fight.
See my note back to Pongo. Also, I think the "more time to fight" argument doesn't apply, most notably, to Hartmann, who didn't start flying until, when, late 1942?
And your constant references to all LW aces as nazis tells me you an axe to grind, ever heard of Nowotny or Molders, or Marsaille.
Accurate observation on your part. Hortlund and I did this awhile ago, and were told then that it belongs in the O'club, so I won't pursue it here beyond pointing out that all three of those guys had swastikas on their airplanes' tails. My skepticism would be there even if they had been daughters of the American revolution - as I have forthrightly admitted when it comes to discussing US bomber gunner claims.
- oldman
-
Originally posted by HoHun
Look at the sortie/kill ratio, and you'll see that the difference becomes less pronounced. Look at the encounter/kill ratio, and the difference might actually vanish.
"[The Americans] normally went home after one hundred missions. If I would have been sent home after one hundred missions, I wouldn't have had any victories at all." (Walter Krupinski, 197 victories)
Yo HoHun! Haven't seen you flying (come over to the dark side of the CT with us!). In the meantime: It isn't just the US rotation policy. Not one of the other combatant nations produced so many aces with claims in the hundreds. Japan claimed, what, two? And it isn't even close otherwise. I'm honestly surprised that more people have just assumed that the German claims were accurate because they were fighting so long.
Here's an example for the asymmetry of air combat: Mike Spick, quoting the USAF "Saber measures" study, shows that in the month preceding D-Day, at a fighter sortie ratio of 2.9:1 the Luftwaffe scored 2.9 kills per sortie compared to 1.3 for the Allies. However, the Luftwaffe also lost 3.6 planes per sortie, compared to 1.0 for the Allies.
But, er, where did he get his figure of 2.9 kills per sortie for the Luftwaffe? Would that be based upon, you know, um, Luftwaffe claims?
Casting this into a simple mathematical model...
I can always count on you for technical assistance! But here I'm not thinking models. I'm wondering what the actual research has shown. So far as I can tell, judging by those who have actually compared losses claims, as our Belgian friend did, the Germans are not coming out well.
- oldman
-
Sure the more time to fight argument applies. Lets look at Hartmann. Find me one allied pilot with 1400 combat sorties, or 800 actual combat engagements? Or is this a fabrication too?
Oldman everyone has investigated these kill talleys in the past 50 years, and nobody has come up with anything outrageously innacurate about them - and you wont either.
Erich Hartmann shot down 352 enemy aircraft, it's that simple, he was the best of the best.
-
Hi Vader,
>what about his claim that the mission against the belgian hurris was a deliberate lie.
The assumption that German kill records were imaginative appears to have been quite common among the WW2 generation authors. While time passed, much research has been carried out, and the accusations mostly seem to have been dropped.
I think the general (and usually well-justified) caution towards German propaganda did lead to each inconsisty in the files to be interpreted as deliberate fake by the early researchers.
If Coppen's reasearch can be confirmed, sooner or later someone will pick it up and put it in print.
Regards,
Henning (HoHun)
-
Hi Oldman,
Sometimes I wonder how our in-game scores would look if kills were awarded based on our after-action reports ;-)
>But, er, where did he get his figure of 2.9 kills per sortie for the Luftwaffe? Would that be based upon, you know, um, Luftwaffe claims?
It was a USAF study, not a Luftwaffe study :-)
USAAF and RAF knew their losses quite well, all they needed from Luftwaffe files were sortie count (and maybe number of Luftwaffe losses).
>But here I'm not thinking models.
Oh, models are an invaluable aid, and often we use them without even thinking about it.
Your statement
"Mainly because it was so contrary to the experience of every other country's pilots. "
implies a model which has similar conditions for all sides. This implicit assumption of course is a bit problematic - which my model, based more closely on history, tried to illustrate :-)
>So far as I can tell, judging by those who have actually compared losses claims, as our Belgian friend did, the Germans are not coming out well.
As I wrote in another post: It were the WW2 generation authors - for example Caidin and apparently Caldwell, too - who openly doubted the German scores. Their doubts seem not to be shared by modern authors though much research has been carried out since.
Regards,
Henning (HoHun)
-
Originally posted by HoHun
>But, er, where did he get his figure of 2.9 kills per sortie for the Luftwaffe? Would that be based upon, you know, um, Luftwaffe claims?
It was a USAF study, not a Luftwaffe study :-)
USAAF and RAF knew their losses quite well, all they needed from Luftwaffe files were sortie count (and maybe number of Luftwaffe losses).
So how did the USAAF and RAF know how many of their planes were lost to fighters, vs. flak, mechanical damage, pilots auguring &c? I would love to see this study, if you have a line on it. Honest. Because I'm still betting they used German claims.
As I wrote in another post: It were the WW2 generation authors - for example Caidin and apparently Caldwell, too - who openly doubted the German scores. Their doubts seem not to be shared by modern authors though much research has been carried out since.
Heh heh. Just so you know, Caldwell IS a modern author; see his web site at http://www.butler98.freeserve.co.uk/jg26.htm. He and Roger Freeman are among the few historians who have actually sat down with the records and puzzled through the claims and losses. I don't think that this is a settled question, by any means. I suspect, instead, that no one wants to do the work.
- oldman (who does not want to do the work, either)
-
Hi Oldman,
>So how did the USAAF and RAF know how many of their planes were lost to fighters, vs. flak, mechanical damage, pilots auguring &c?
Remember the Allies filed combat reports for every mission containing all known details on their own losses. Observation of the fate of lost aircraft was vital so you'd know the status of the crew. Combat operations usually involved multiple aircraft who'd probably witness what happened to their squadron mates, and there was radio, too. There might be a share of unclear cases, but there can be no doubt that the causes for the majority of the losses were known reliably.
>I would love to see this study, if you have a line on it. Honest. Because I'm still betting they used German claims.
Have a look at:
http://www.au.af.mil/au/aul/bibs/korea/aerial.htm
U.S. Air Force. The Relationship Between Sortie Ratios and Loss Rates for Air-To-Air Battle Engagements During World War II and Korea: Saber Measures Charlie. Washington, 1970. 22p.
Doc. call no.: M-U 42210-75
Regards,
Henning (HoHun)
-
i wouldnt dout that germans got that many kills,,,they had some good fighter pilots,,and they were going up outnumberd,,,i notice even on aces high,,when im outnumberd,,i still get atleast 2 to 3 kills flying smart and with the much faster planes at the time,,they could keep the kills racked up,,,i think at the fall of germany,,they were sending up 200 planes,,against 3,000 a day,,and still getting kills with inexperienced fighter pilots,,,,by the time the end came germans didnt have any good pilots left,,and numbers were against them plain and simple,,,,if not for all of the countries helping out,,,we would proubly all be speaking german at this time,,they were so far ahead in fighters and tech,,,little more time,,they would of been unstoppible,,,but thx too many of the people who gave there lives to stop them ,,we still got are own countries and lives,,,but i have to say,,,if not for the numbers,,i dont think they would of been stopped,,good fighter pilots,,and even better planes
-
hyena,
How difficult would it be to use paragraphs and stuff? Perhaps folks would actually bother to read your posts then. If you wish to be unreadable to the extreme you should type all caps.
// fats
-
Originally posted by Pongo
Given a simular number of targets and a simulare time to engage them the allies would have had 200kill + aces as well. there is no magic, it is just oppertunity, opertunity that the Germans had.
How many aircombats did David Mcambell participate in to shoot down 34? Aircraft...dozens at most..imagine letting him go at it for 5 long years against enemies with vast numerical supperiority.
he would have had lots more kills.
Sorry, but the most probable end of the story after 5 years of fighting against numerical superiority would be : death
Donīt believe that german aces liked the situation of a "target rich environment" (lol). Because in such a situation YOU are the target
niklas
-
lol,cant read them?,,,,,maybe you need glasses,,,,,,,hehahe,,,,,,i got know problem with reading them:D ethere do my buddies,,,,,,,,,and got plenty of replies{you being one of them},,lol and please keep the thread point about the thread instead of attacking some ones typing style
-
and yes,,germans were big targets,,,,better planes,,,,and being outnumberd,,,,could we say usa or england would of held up against such a overwhelming odds?
-
Originally posted by fats
hyena,
How difficult would it be to use paragraphs and stuff? Perhaps folks would actually bother to read your posts then. If you wish to be unreadable to the extreme you should type all caps.
// fats
I'm with fats here. I also wonder if it would be possible for some people to type their posts in MS Word (or similar) with the auto spell check on? Or at least proof read before hitting the "submit post" button.
I sometimes come away from the board with a bigger headache than the one I get talking to my boss.
palef
-
make a thread then saying{bad typing haters club},,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,please leave aircraft and othere threads to just aircraft and not personal attacks on people's spelling or typing
-
i've read a number of books that said that luftwaffe pilots of higher rank were on the honor system for kills and only the lower ranks needed confirmation...on the other hand there were over 30,000 slow, single engine Il2s out there, most of which didn't survive the war
-
i wouldnt dout some of them got tons of kills,,they were out numbered and im sure had alot of chances to get alot of il2's and othere slow bombers,,,the russian air force was trashed on for a while
-
Hyena,
That is not a typing style it is a typing defect. Your typing and sentence forming is the equivalent of speaking as clearly as Snoop Dogg mumbles on his albums or interviews.
This is not a attack at you or anything like that. Just a friendly reminder that it would be a service for others to try type as clearly and to the point as possible. Your messages contain zero structure and only random ammounts of "," placed in between seemingly random words.
So are you really incapable of writing like you were tought in school?
// fats
-
good god will you let it rest?,,,geesh,,who cares?,,lol
-
talk about planes not crappy righting or typing,,,,,,,,,i hope they add the stuka soon,,i wanna hear them dive sirens:D
-
J_A_B- in response to what happen to Richtofen's trophies, they were for the most part lost when WWII began.
I forget how it happened, but it was in a book entitled "Richtofen" that said what happened. I have a couple of books on him, they all pretty much agree that almost all his war relics were lost in his mom's house when WWII began. Due to the house being bombarded I think.
-SW
-
the red baron was the man:),,,how many kills did he have?,,over 200 im sure ,i cant remmeber the true count off hand
-
Originally posted by hyena426
the red baron was the man:),,,how many kills did he have?,,over 200 im sure ,i cant remmeber the true count off hand
Eighty.
Don't you remember the song, "Snoopy and the Red Baron"?
- oldman
-
Originally posted by HoHun
>I would love to see this study, if you have a line on it. Honest. Because I'm still betting they used German claims.
Have a look at:
http://www.au.af.mil/au/aul/bibs/korea/aerial.htm
U.S. Air Force. The Relationship Between Sortie Ratios and Loss Rates for Air-To-Air Battle Engagements During World War II and Korea: Saber Measures Charlie. Washington, 1970. 22p.
Doc. call no.: M-U 42210-
I may actually be able to put my hands on this. Will let you know.
- oldman
-
Originally posted by HoHun
Have a look at:
http://www.au.af.mil/au/aul/bibs/korea/aerial.htm
U.S. Air Force. The Relationship Between Sortie Ratios and Loss Rates for Air-To-Air Battle Engagements During World War II and Korea: Saber Measures Charlie. Washington, 1970. 22p.
Doc. call no.: M-U 42210-75
All right, HoHun, I actually obtained a copy of this document. Let me know your FAX number, I can send it to you if you're interested. It's pretty disappointing (the central thesis is that the side with the greater numbers is going to win the war), but, as pertinent to this thread, it is useless. The author obtained his information on kills and losses from Joseph H. Reinburg, Air-to-Air Combat in World War II: Quantitative History, Research Paper p. 345, Institute for Defense Analyses, Arlington, VA, Nov 1966, Defense Documentation Center No. 659043, AFCSA Shelf No. 10258.
Guess I'll continue the quest when I get some more time. Still betting that Mr. Reinburg used German figures, though.
- oldman
-
Ahem, Belgians are like kids, they only speak the truth, I swear :D
-
Red Baron (Richthofen) had 80 kills. This is the most official victories of any WW1 pilot, although it's possible that a few pilots (particularly Fonck) may have actually scored more.
J_A_B
-
Hi Oldman,
>It's pretty disappointing (the central thesis is that the side with the greater numbers is going to win the war), but, as pertinent to this thread, it is useless.
Too bad, I had hoped that it would be good stuff :-(
I'm really surprised that the study suspected victory to go with numbers, in "The Ace Factor" Mike Spick draws a very detailed picture from the same figures, showing that there was more to air combat than force ratios.
Great you could find that report, though - it's always better to have the full data available than having to trust a summary :-)
>Guess I'll continue the quest when I get some more time. Still betting that Mr. Reinburg used German figures, though.
I'm not so sure about that as the same asymmetric effect as in the pre-D-Day period can be observed in the France 1940 period, only with the Luftwaffe being numerically superior and scoring fewer victories per sortie. But if there's a chance to find the Reinburg report as well, we might learn for certain :-)
Regards,
Henning (HoHun)
-
Hi Oldman,
Thanks a lot for the Saber Measures Charlie report! :-)
Regarding the report's historic background: I think it was a product of the "Fighter Mafia" :-)
My knowledge of that is limited to reading about MILFORUM posts by people who where in the services and in the industry at that time, but I'll try to summarize what I've picked up from their posts (hoping that I don't get it all wrong):
The so-called "Fighter Mafia" was a group that had formed around John F. Boyd, the inventor of the Energy Maneuverability concept. While the USAF was acquiring a decreasing number of increasingly complex fighters, the Fighter Mafia considered this development to be dangerous since they believed that strength was based on numbers.
The Fighter Mafia pushed for the USAF to acquire a large number of inexpensive specialized for the daylight air superiority role. What they didn't want was the F-15, which was the most current result of the "too few complex fighters" development they opposed. What they wanted, and what they got, was the F-16.
(It's pretty ironic that with this kind of background, the F-16 has become an incredibly versatile multi-role aircraft :-)
In 1970 when the Saber Measures Charlie study was prepared, the light-weight fighter (LWF) programme that lead to the F-16 (and the YF-17) might have been in its early stages of conception (I'm not sure of the exact time line). The study, by proving the value of numerical superriority, probably was launched to provide justification for the (then revolutionary) approach of building a simpler fighter instead of a more complex one, and to go for quantity instead of quality.
The connection to the Fighter Mafia is quite obvious from the study:
"INTRODUCTION
The outcome of a particular air-to-air engagement between two opposing aircraft is influenced largely by:
- The relative effectiveness inherent in the two opposing weapon systems as determined by:
Energy-maneuverability
[...]
On a larger scale, the outcome of a conflict between two opposing air forces is determined more than the aggregate of individual engagements [...]
This study attempts to illuminate the gross influence of the latter factor - relative strengths."
Think "John F. Boyd", "F-16", and "Light Weigt Fighter" :-)
"OBSERVATIONS
Quantitative analysis of historical data tends strongly to support the professional intuition to employ the principle of Mass in air-to-air combat. The benefits of Mass are dramatic; if a commander has a strength advantage, he may markedly reducce his own loss rate while greatly increasing the loss rate of his opponent [...]"
Again, this anticipates the goal of the LWF program - to acquire large numbers of cheap yet highly capable air-superiority fighters.
So much to the background :-)
With regard to our original topic, the study obviously relied entirely on data from the Reinburg paper you already mentioned. From the overview given in Saber Measures, Reinburg relied on multiple sources and a bit of guesswork :-) It sounds like he very probably relied on Luftwaffe numbers somewhere in his study, but it also sounds as if he didn't do so uncritically. The tables I quoted from Saber Measures via Spick are referenced as page 345 of the Reinburg papers, so it looks like a heavyweight study compared to Saber Measures which is - appropriately ;-) - light-weight.
About the only thing we can really learn about the accuracy of the Reinburg numbers is that in Saber Measures, they yield nicely symmetric results for the WW2 engagements, which could be taken as a sign that neither side overclaimed worse than the other side.
The Korean War curves are highly asymmetric, and I think recent research indicates that "Blue" overclaimed quite a bit. ("Red" did too, and even worse, but in 1970 the USAF didn't have access to Soviet figures :-) Still, there can be no doubt that even corrected figures still would show a marked asymmetry in favour of "Blue".
Regarding the methods of the Saber Measures study, I'd say the exclusion of certain data points seems a bit arbitrary, and the curve fitting is done without providing any measure of the quality of the fit. Using eyeball assessment, I'd suspect the correlation to be a bit on the weak side perhaps ;-)
I think that's all I can say to Saber Measures Charley. Quite interesting as it shows how some people 30 years back looked back another 30 years, but I agree it's not particularly useful for us (or anyone, I'd suspect) today.
Sudden inspiration: It might be interesting to try and extract similar statistics as used in the study from the events in the online arena and see how it fiction compares to reality! ;-)
Thanks again for the report! It was really fun to try and get the jigsaw pieces to fit :-)
Regards,
Henning (HoHun)