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To: cunning_fish

Russian claims for anything during WWII were always false. Two American pilots studied Russian claims for their pilots. They were often off by 3 or 4 hundred per cent.

Obviously they did shoot down German planes and their snipers killed many Germans but their figures are purposely inflated.

I have no idea about the Finn but would much more trust them than the Russians. BTW, the Germans were the most accurate, probably even under counting their aces victories because their methods were so detailed. Really amazing considering they had many with over a hundred victories and one with 352. The Americans were next to the most accurate.

The Japanese were the next worst but the guys who did the research did not believe they were purposely inflating numbers, just not very accurate.


81 posted on 01/30/2013 10:11:31 AM PST by yarddog (One shot one miss.)
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To: yarddog

We had the added avantage of being able to rotate out our pilots. The Germans and Japanese did not have that luxury. Our aces lived and passed on valuable info to the next group of pilots. This is one reason why we did not have aces with higher aerial kills.

The dummies in command forget all these history lessons. The Russian women fought because they were running out of men.


82 posted on 01/30/2013 12:58:38 PM PST by USAF80
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To: yarddog

I don’t think Germans deserve that much credit. They were as guilty in inflating their victories. They often claimed twice as much kills than Soviets could ever deploy to the area listing zero losses at the time despite presence of their numerous wrecks on enemy territory. Germans did some fantastic claims against the British too. But overclaiming was not intentional in most cases for both Germans and Soviets (how can you define a recoverable belly-landing on friendly territory?).
In any way, modern figures are verified using both sides’ archives.
Also I think it is pretty realistic if a female fighter pilot could shot down 5 to 11 German bombers during the Battle of Stalingrad. Much more realistic than for a German guy who claims over 220 kills on Western front.

As for snipers I have no idea how one may objectively check these claims. Both Finnish and Soviet might be a propaganda case.


84 posted on 01/30/2013 4:44:44 PM PST by cunning_fish
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