Confirmation and overclaiming of aerial victories during World War II

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This article explores confirmation and overclaiming of aerial victories during World War II. In aerial warfare, the term overclaiming describes a combatant (or group) that claims the destruction of more enemy aircraft than actually achieved. The net effect is that the actual losses and claimed victories are unequal, and that the claiming side is inaccurately reporting their combat achievements, thereby potentially undermining their credibility to all parties participating and observing the war.

In order to reduce the risk of overclaiming, the various militaries participating in World War II developed methods and procedures for confirmation of claimed aerial victories in an attempt to more reliably report actual losses.

There are disagreements over the terminology to be used in assessing "aerial victories". Former Canadian Armed Forces pilot and Wings editor Wayne Ralph (2008) cautioned that the term "flying ace", emerging during the First World War, 'was first coined by the French in 1915. There are no governing international bodies controlling the label or screening entry into the club. The enemy you fight does not have to die for you to be credited with a victory. Therefore the expression "kills" used when discussing aces is misleading. It is confirmed victories, not deaths in air combat that produces aces.'^[1] Ralph argued that 'books about aces create mythologies of good, better and best, portraying air-to-air combat as a kind of international sporting event where bronze, silver and gold medals are awarded based on scores. Any conclusions drawn from such simplistic rankings are meaningless.'^[1]

Mike Spick (1996/2011) stated: 'Fighter pilots differ from most other warriors in that there is a practical, as opposed to subjective, yardstick by which their deeds can be measured. This is the number of aerial victories they score. To pre-empt comments about overclaiming, the author wishes to stress that a victory is not necessarily a kill: it is a combat in which an enemy aircraft appears to be hit, and goes down in such a manner as to make the successful pilot believe that it is a total loss.'^[2]

• Forced to land (FTL): the enemy aircraft had to in either allied or enemy territory.^[3] During World War I in 1915 and 1916, the British military could award victories for FTL,^[3] but for enemy territory cases, it was evidently difficult to confirm whether it was really "forced to land" due to the British flyers' actions or for other reasons.^{[citation needed]} Even if in allied territory, capture of the aircraft and/or its crew was not required either, which also compromised verification and thus accuracy.^{[citation needed]}
  • Fallen in captivity: the enemy aircraft had to land in allied territory and be captured by allied ground or naval forces.^{[citation needed]}
• Out of control (OOC): the enemy aircraft was allegedly out of the pilot's control, but it was not observed crashing down on earth.^{[citation needed]} This designation was vulnerable to misperception, and impossible to confirm due to a lack of visual evidence of a crash site.^{[citation needed]}
• Driven down^{[citation needed]}
• Falling in flames^{[citation needed]}
• Crashed to earth^{[citation needed]}
• Disintegrated in flight^{[citation needed]}
• Pilot bailed: the enemy pilot was observed using his ejection seat (and parachute). This was one of the better forms of evidence to confirm an enemy pilot had lost control of the aircraft or could no longer safely escape with it. While bailed pilots could stand a high chance of survival (depending on circumstances) and thus not be counted as a "kill", the aircraft was unlikely to be salvaged, and opposing force is generally credited with an aerial victory in such a scenario.^{[citation needed]}

Overclaiming by individuals can occur:

• when more than one person attacked the same target and each claimed its destruction afterwards;^[1][4]
• when an aircraft appeared to be no longer in a flying condition, but managed to recover on a lowe altitude without crashing, and landing safely;^[4]
• when an individual simply wished to claim unjustified credit for downing an opponent, based on poor eyewitness testimony of thinking having seen it go down in a split second, but being unable to verify it in the heat of the moment.^[4]

In some instances of combat over friendly territory a damaged aircraft may have been claimed as an aerial victory by its opponent, while the aircraft was later salvaged and restored to an operational status.^[4] In this situation the loss may not appear in the records while the claim remains confirmed.^[5]

Separate from problems with confirmation, overclaiming can also occur for political or propaganda reasons, to stimulate morale amongst the troops or at the home front, or to attempt to undermine the enemy's morale. It was common for both sides to inflate figures for "kills" or deflate figures for losses in broadcasts and news reports.^{[citation needed]} There were also issues of competition and rivalry between individual pilots, as well as aircrew teams or units, where a higher score of aerial victories increased social prestige, and could lead to both official and informal military and civilian decorations, awards and honours, which added pressure to inflate claims, and contributed to overclaiming.^{[citation needed]}

Overclaiming during World War II has been the centre of much scrutiny, partly because of the significant amount of air combat relative to other conflicts. Leadership often recognised overclaiming in WW2, even for non-aerial victories, and a process of dividing figures by 2 was often observed to come to a closer understanding of the reality of the claims. Overclaiming as a whole was very common in World War II, against aerial, naval or ground targets. A good and commonly observed method of cross-examining claims is to corroborate them with the recorded losses by the other side, where overclaiming is often contrasted strongly against real losses.^{[citation needed]}

Ralph (2008) noted: 'In the First World War, the Second World War and also the Korean War, overclaiming was common; it varied by theatre, nation and individual, but it was inevitable.'^[1] 'Comparing aces, within or between nations, based solely on their victory scores is an absurd exercise, and does a great disservice to all fighter pilots. (...) [T]he standard of due diligence in crediting victories to individual pilots varies according to the country, the war being fought, how well or badly the war is going, the doctrine of the opposing air forces, and the leaders in command of individual fighter squadrons and flights. Many other variables affect these alleged rankings. The process of crediting victories is not immune to subjective concerns such as ambition, both individual and institutional, and exaggeration, either deliberate or inadvertent. Aerial combat is almost always confusing. The oft-used term "fog of war" applies equally to air war.'^[1]

In the 1945 U.S. report Statistical summary of Eighth Air Force operations: European theater, 17 Aug. 1942 - 8 May 1945, the following definitions were applied:^[6]

Destroyed: A. Enemy aircraft in flight shall be considered destroyed when:

1. Seen to crash.
2. Seen to disintegrate in the air or to be enveloped in flames.
3. Seen to descend on friendly territory and be captured.
4. Pilot and entire crew seen to bail out.

The Luftwaffe's aerial victory recognition procedure was based on directive 55270/41 named "Recognition of aerial victories, destructions and sinking of ships" (German: Anerkennung von Abschüssen, Zerstörungen und Schiffsvernichtung) and was issued by the Oberbefehlshaber der Luftwaffe (Luftwaffe high command). This directive was first issued in 1939 and was updated several times during World War II.^[7]

In theory the German approval process for the confirmation of aerial victories was very stringent and required a witness.^[8] The final destruction or explosion of an enemy aircraft in the air, or bail-out of the pilot from the aircraft, had to be observed on gun-camera film or by at least one other human witness. The witness could be the German pilot's wingman, another in the squadron, or an observer on the ground.^[8] If a pilot reported shooting down an aircraft without this confirmation it was considered only a "probable" and did not count in the victory scoring process.^{[citation needed]}

During the 1990s, the German archives were made available to the public in the form of microfilm rolls of wartime records that had not been seen since January 1945.^[9] The records show that, although the Luftwaffe generally did not accept a "kill" without a witness, some pilots habitually submitted unwitnessed claims and sometimes these made it through the verification process, particularly if they were made by pilots with established records.^[9] Unlike all of the other air forces that fought during World War II, the Luftwaffe did not accept shared claims, but sometimes it happened. Each claim should have referred to a particular aircraft, but some victories were awarded to other pilots who had claimed the destruction of the same aircraft.^[9] From mid-year 1943 through 1944, the Wehrmachtbericht (communiques from the head of the armed forces) often overstated Allied bomber losses by a factor of up to two; these claims existed only in the communiques and were not used in victory scoring.^{[citation needed]}

Defenders of the German fighter pilots maintain that overclaims were eliminated during the confirmation process, but the microfilms show that this was not always the case.^[9] Stringent review of German archives show that 90 percent of the claims submitted to the RLM were "confirmed", or found to be "in order for confirmation", up to the time the system broke down altogether in 1945.^[9]

Barrett Tillman (2014) noted that U.S. and Japanese claims of aerial victories in the Pacific theatre were often far removed from reality. 'From the first dedicate fighter sweep on December 17 [1943] through the month's end, IJN [Imperial Japanese Navy] records 25 Zero losses among 492 sorties, whereas US Marine Corps squadrons alone claimed 79 victories. US Navy pilots added nine more, so excluding USAAF and RNZAF claims, the naval squadrons reckoned 3.5 victories for every actual Japanese loss.'^[10] He went on to argue: 'If the Americans were often excessive in their victory claims, the Japanese dealt in fantasy. Frequently, Rabaul's fighter pilots claimed 50 victories in a day, the record being January 28, 1943 when the claimed 79 kills, plus probables. American records indicate five airplanes were missing and one fatally damages on that date. The remarkable thing is that the Japanese believed their own figures, despite the fact that as [sic] no successful Solomons air campaign could have sustained such grievous losses.'^[11]

In World War II, overclaims were a common problem. Nearly 50% of Royal Air Force (RAF) victories in the Battle of Britain, for instance, do not tally statistically with recorded German losses; but some at least of this apparent over-claiming can be tallied with known wrecks, and German aircrew known to have been in British PoW camps.^[12]

• Aerial victory standards of World War I
• Confirmation bias
• Equipment losses in World War II
  • German and Allied aircraft losses during Operation Bodenplatte
• Fog of war
• Ghost of Kyiv
• Military intelligence
• Selective perception
• Verification bias

• Statistical summary of Eighth Air Force operations: European theater, 17 Aug. 1942 – 8 May 1945. 8th Air Force. 1945. p. 83. Retrieved 29 October 2024.