List of World War II Aces From Germany - Over Claiming

Over Claiming

In the 1990s, the German archives made available microfilm rolls of wartime records, not seen since January 1945, available to the public. These showed that while in theory the Luftwaffe did not accept a kill without a witness, which was considered only a probable, in practice some units habitually submitted unwitnessed claims and these sometimes made it through the verification process, particularly if they were made by pilots with already established records. In theory the Luftwaffe did not accept shared claims, but it happened. In theory each separate claim should have referred to a particular aircraft, but in practice some victories were awarded to other pilots who had claimed the destruction of the same aircraft. In 1943 the daily OKW communiques of this period habitually overstated American bomber losses by a factor of two or more. Defenders of German fighter pilots have always maintained that these were reduced during the confirmation process. But the microfilms prove this not to be the case. Some 80 – 90 percent of the claims submitted were confirmed or found to be "in order" for confirmation up to the time the system broke down altogether in 1945.

This along with the * (asterisk), indicates that the pilot was either killed in action (KIA), missing in action (MIA), died of wounds (DOW) or killed in a flying accident (KIFA).