Me-262 v. 6 Mustangs

[DD_Arthur]

Absolutely first class m8?

Big S!

[PatrickAWlson]

On 7/25/2021 at 9:44 AM, DD_Arthur said:

 

They were mistaken or...they were making it up.

Theres absolutely nothing unusual or unique about all pilots from all countries over claiming.

From what we all know of human nature I venture that a few of these claims were straight fabrication whilst the vast majority were simply pilots reporting what they saw or what they thought they saw.

 

From what I understand of LW procedure these two Mustangs would never be confirmed due to lack of corroborating witnesses no?

 

 

 

Or, if the rockets actually hit something maybe the Mustangs thought they were hit by Flak.  Not saying that is the case (I concede that he missed is more likely) but it's not impossible.

[wokelly]

On 5/11/2022 at 5:49 PM, PatrickAWlson said:

 

Or, if the rockets actually hit something maybe the Mustangs thought they were hit by Flak.  Not saying that is the case (I concede that he missed is more likely) but it's not impossible.

Its not impossible given the fog of war, but the circumstances the Mustangs were lost in based off the MACR's don't gel with the ME262s pilots account. The ME262 pilot talks about attacking Mustangs at 4000 meters after they shot down a wingman, after they formed up and flew away he snuck up on them and blasted two with rockets and flew off while the Mustangs dived away. Ultimately its a judgement call, but the accounts in the MACRs for the circumstances of how the aircraft were lost (almost all at low level during strafing runs) don't jive with the ME262 pilots accounts. In particular the other Mustangs would have seen the two planes hit by rockets go down and the MACRs would have reflected losses at high altitude to *something* even if they didn't see the rockets.

 

P51D (#44-64156)

 

P51D (#44-15556)

 

P51D (#44-72274)

P51D (#44-15078)

 

P51D (#44-15327) - The wingman of the above loss, so was also lost at low level

 

P51D (#44-15702) - No MACR but secondary sources list a coolant leak as being the cause.

 

P47D (#44-21017)

 

P47D (#42-27248)

 

P47D (#42-25900)

 

P47D (#42-28419)

 

[PatrickAWlson]

@wokellythanks for the posts.  The air war might have been mostly won but attacking anything on the ground was still brutal.  The one with the tank was interesting.  I guess there was a lot more around than just the tank.  All sad really as they are almost all young men KIA.  

[jollyjack]

The good thing is that ww2 in IL2 GB is a game about cowboys and Indians almost like these:

 

[wokelly]

21 hours ago, PatrickAWlson said:

@wokellythanks for the posts.  The air war might have been mostly won but attacking anything on the ground was still brutal.  The one with the tank was interesting.  I guess there was a lot more around than just the tank.  All sad really as they are almost all young men KIA.  

Yeah by far the major killer of American fighters in March and April were flak from ground strafing. Unfortunately the USAAF stopped tracking the causes of their fighter losses some time in 1944 (There were nice charts and tables breaking down the losses up to that point), so its really confused the issue of USAAF fighter losses to ME262s, because US fighter losses tended to exceed the claims made by 262 pilots, so the claims looked plausible. But once you start picking through the MACRs you see the accounts from wingmen almost always suggest flak from low level straffing was the cause. The difference between ME262 claims vs fighters and what the MACRs suggest is enormous, something like an over-claiming rate of 400% or greater, in comparison it looks like around half the bomber claims made by ME262s are valid.

[357th_KW]

I’ve seen references of orders being issued by 8th Fighter Command as early as September of 1944 to restrict and eventually ban airfield strafing, as the losses taken were thought to be excessive.  Ultimately the units and pilots themselves largely ignored these orders.  Missions on April 9th and 10th resulted in claims for 416 aircraft destroyed on the ground and 283 damaged at a cost of 14 aircraft lost, resulting in the final outright “ban” on strafing being issued on April 11th, 1945.  The next week turned into a feeding frenzy of airfield strafing, with claims of 265 on April 13th, 743 on April 16th and 269 on April 17th!  The cost of those three days was 60 fighters, almost all of them to flak.  

[Jaws2002]

On 7/26/2021 at 6:18 PM, sevenless said:

True. However. If these numbers here (US digest 1945) are to be trusted, the US lost most of its planes (bombers and fighters) in 1945 to FLAK anyways. (AFD-090608-039.pdf).

 

 

That's a very typical propaganda move. Remember the Gulf war? It took USA two decades to admit they lost aircraft to Iraqi fighters. Back then, all their losses were due to "technical difficulties' and SAMS. 

Same in virtually all the recent air wars. Air combat kills are a huge propaganda tool.  Remember the "Ghost of Kiev"? ?

 There's a boat load of propaganda BS involved in air victories "stats" and "facts". 

 

About WW2 one thing is certain, everyone overclaimed, but nobody overclaimed as much as the Americans.

Edited July 30, 2022 by Jaws2002

[sevenless]

3 hours ago, Jaws2002 said:

About WW2 one thing is certain, everyone overclaimed, but nobody overclaimed as much as the Americans.

 

You mean they overclaimed their own losses to FLAK? Interesting idea...

[LukeFF]

8 hours ago, Jaws2002 said:

nobody overclaimed as much as the Americans.

 

The Soviet air forces by far were the worst, based on what I have read in Black Cross / Red Star. 

[Jaws2002]

33 minutes ago, LukeFF said:

 

The Soviet air forces by far were the worst, based on what I have read in Black Cross / Red Star. 

I'm not sure they outdone the USAAF bomber gunners.

[BraveSirRobin]

1 hour ago, Jaws2002 said:

I'm not sure they outdone the USAAF bomber gunners.

You just moved the goalposts a long ways from “Americans” to “USAAF bomber gunners”.

[wokelly]

On 7/28/2022 at 9:18 PM, 357th_KW said:

I’ve seen references of orders being issued by 8th Fighter Command as early as September of 1944 to restrict and eventually ban airfield strafing, as the losses taken were thought to be excessive.  Ultimately the units and pilots themselves largely ignored these orders.  Missions on April 9th and 10th resulted in claims for 416 aircraft destroyed on the ground and 283 damaged at a cost of 14 aircraft lost, resulting in the final outright “ban” on strafing being issued on April 11th, 1945.  The next week turned into a feeding frenzy of airfield strafing, with claims of 265 on April 13th, 743 on April 16th and 269 on April 17th!  The cost of those three days was 60 fighters, almost all of them to flak.  

 

I never heard of the ban on airfield straffing before. Yeah from the MACRs the USAAF was losing several fighters every raid due to being shot down by airfield flak. Mind you given there were hundreds or at times thousands of fighters escorting these raids, it seems you'd be likely to get away with strafing 99 times out of 100. But yeah its sad to see the young guys getting killed so close to the end of the war, especially since being so low gave the pilots little chance of escape when they were hit.

 

 

12 hours ago, BraveSirRobin said:

You just moved the goalposts a long ways from “Americans” to “USAAF bomber gunners”.

 

I mean US gunners over-claiming make sense, you have 20-30 of them firing at the same target, of course there would be lots of duplicate claims. The only real problem IMO was the 8th AF HQ seems to have never understood just how bad it was and believed a significant amount of the claims. In terms of American fighter pilot claims, they don't seem any worse than any other nations in terms of over-claiming. I mean the Luftwaffe fighter pilots in the fall of 1944 were over-claiming US bombers by up to 4x some days, many of which were approved by the OKL despite US records showing clearly lower loss rates. I can't speak about the Soviets, but I don't think anyone can wholly point their fingers at any nation as being the worse without some really detailed analysis.

 

There is a recent book called "Verified Victories: Top JG 52 Aces Over Hungary 1944-45" which looks at some of JG52s top aces (including Hartmann) over Hungary and it shows a lot of over-claiming by those guys against the Red Air Force. No one was exactly immune to the tendency to believer the plane they hit was destroyed.

[357th_KW]

22 hours ago, Jaws2002 said:

 

 

That's a very typical propaganda move. Remember the Gulf war? It took USA two decades to admit they lost aircraft to Iraqi fighters. Back then, all their losses were due to "technical difficulties' and SAMS. 

Same in virtually all the recent air wars. Air combat kills are a huge propaganda tool.  Remember the "Ghost of Kiev"? ?

 There's a boat load of propaganda BS involved in air victories "stats" and "facts". 

 

About WW2 one thing is certain, everyone overclaimed, but nobody overclaimed as much as the Americans.

Th US loss records that you assert are propaganda weren’t published, and are only available today due to freedom of information laws in the US that require government records be released after enough years have passed.  You can access them on various websites.  Here’s an example of one regarding an A-20G lost on a ferry flight from Montana to Alaska: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/90886441  Combat losses typically included witness statements from wingmen, who had often observed the demise of the crew in question.

As others have already pointed out in this thread, you can find examples of wild over claims from every participant of the war.  The US was no exception in this regard, but we can also find examples where their claims were extremely accurate.  An example is Nov 2nd 1944 - the 8th AF struck the Merseburg/Leuna oil complex resulting in a massive air battle, deep in Germany where no other forces could have been involved.  US claims were 36 destroyed by the bomber gunners and 102 by fighters - German loss records for the day showed 133 fighters lost, and another 35 damaged.  Remarkable accuracy, given that there were around 2500 aircraft in the air that day.  Those numbers are from Caldwell’s “Day Fighters in Defence of the Reich”.