Just how many attacking aircraft did bomber crews actually shoot down ?

All air forces in WWII exaggerated how many planes they shot down but from memory the defensive air gunners on bombers were the most inaccurate in their estimates of how many planes they`d destroyed. Has anyone got any figures of how many attacking fighters were actually shot down by bomber crews over Europe (RAF night bombers and US daylight) ? This should specifically exclude planes shot down by escorting fighters.

 

The only way to find out is to compare Luftwaffe losses vs U.S. and RAF claims. Even then figures would conflict, because luftwaffe losses could have resulted from accidents, colliding, "friendly" fire etc... Besides most day losses were due to fighter escort activity, not bomber gunners. I have no idea for the gunner ratio, but it must be very small from zero to one or two aircraft per mission for day missions, and even less for night operations (in fact nightfighters mostly approached without being even noticed and shot down their preys before they had a chance to react) .

 

Army Air Forces Statistical Digest, World War II has these numbers for aerial victories in the ETO: 6,098 by heavy bombers, 7,422 by fighters, and 103 by medium bombers.

How many of those were actually losses remain a matter of conjecture. Post-war studies suggest that fighter pilots overclaimed by about a 2:1 margin. The degree to which bomber gunners overclaimed varies greatly depending on who you ask, and I don't believe anyone has provided solid evidence to support any particular ratio of overclaiming.

 

I've seen 10:1 mentioned fairly frequently but no idea what it is based on. Those victories listed in the AAF statisitical Digest are claims, aren't they?

 

The 2 vs 1 seems more realistic, but still overesteemated in my opinion. It all depends whether you mention day missions or not. The 10 vs 1 figure would suit night operations. This would make a 1vs 5 ratio, but this is only a guess considering it is almost impossible to calculate the losses. I take these kind of figures very carefully and I don't think it will be mathematically proven one day. Just to think some claims are shared between fighters and gunners, makes this almost impossible. Some will publish figures to sell their book, but then they should maybe also publish unknown loss causes and they'd get some extra grey hair.

 

One of the reasons for 10:1 not being too far off is if a fighter was shot down attacking a bomber box just about every gunner who fired on him would likely claim a kill. Thus you could get several claims from a single B-24 or B-17. Now combine that with there being very little way to confirm kills. I.e. the fighter started smoking did it crash or recover? Many gunners would assume it crashed and make a claim. If it flew through another formation in that shape you have even more claims.

 

I wouldn't doubt the "lwd" might have hit the nail on the head, even with fighter gun-camera footage there are times when a couple of USAAF pursuit planes are shooting at the same guy, cross each other's flight path and almost end up shooting each other. If the plane starts to smoke and dives away there is the question, did it blow up, did he bail out, did it crash or land. Bomber formations had even more exaggerated claims it would seem to myself, especially in the ETO. When the B-29 showed up the computer aided single operator for all but the tail gunner may have made the bomber claims less questionable as to kills per bomber, just a thought.

 

The numbers in the Statistical Digest are claims that were accepted after the debriefing vetting process. All claims submitted by individual gunners were not accepted.

 

I personally believe 10:1 is way out of line. The notion that “every gunner who fired on him would likely claim a kill” is one of those lines that has been repeated so often that it has become “fact”. However, my experience looking at the claims by B-24 gunners in the mission folders does not support that notion. The gunners were not undisciplined rogues. They were firing tracer and had a reasonably good idea if their shells were hitting the target. Did they overclaim? Sure, but I don’t believe they overclaimed wildly.

I’ll use the 29 May 44 15[SUP]th[/SUP] AF mission to Wiener Neustadt as an example. Per the Combat Chronology, the 15[SUP]th[/SUP] sent up 829 losing 23 aircraft while being opposed by 150 fighters and claiming a combined 60 aircraft by fighters and the heavies. So, this was a fairly intense air battle in the target area. Per Josef Schmid’s work, the GAF put up 101 fighters in opposition, losing 22 with 8 missing. Assuming most of the missing were lost, the combined HB and fighters overclaimed on the order of 3:1.

The particular B-24 group for which I have records reported attacks by 50-60 enemy aircraft and had 5 gunners submit claims. One claim was for “damaged”, and 4 for “destroyed”. Two of the claims were determined by the intelligence officers to be the same aircraft, so joint credit was given the two gunners. Total claims became 3 destroyed and 1 damaged. The claims had to be corroborated by others and in many cases were corroborated by other aircraft. Two of the claim forms are attached.
View attachment 17176

 

Crikey. I was reading a website yesterday with all these statistics. Yesterday.
Not a clue in the world where it was. Spent an hour going through my "history" to no avail...

I had started here...
http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/aviation/pilot-claims-vs-actual-enemy-losses-discrepancy-25866.html

then moved on to "Kill ratios" here: http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/aviation/kill-ratios-1632-3.html

LUFTWAFFE Claims vs. Kills in World War II

 

The ratios I gave are ones often accepted for "claims" so the vetting process would of course mean those numbers are closer to correct.

One has to be very careful about using single examples to prove points like this though. When I've seen this discussed previously it's been noted for both British and German fighter claims the accuracy varied over time and unit. Some units were almost spot on and occasionally even underclaimed where others tended to overclaim by margins well over the 2:1 ratio often mentioned.

This is addessed to some extent at: American versus British Requirements for Fighter Claims

Then there's http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/AAF-Luftwaffe/tables/AAF-Luftwaffe-LXIV.jpg
Unfortunatly it only goes through june of 1944 but during that period from May 1940 to June 1944 the Germans lost ~6,000 fighters in combat. If we restrict ourselves to 1943 and 1944 when USAAF started having significant impact then the Germasn lost ~3,600 fighters but that includes losses to British and Soviet planes as well as AA fire. Even if this number is doubled in the period form July 1944 to the end of the war you only have ~7,000 German fighters lost in that period where US claims alone are ~14,000. From Strategy for Defeat: The Luftwaffe 1933-1945 table LX it looks like about 1/3 of the fighters in June of 44 were deployed against the Soviets and only a total of 1,375 which makes the loss of ~3,500 in the next 9 months rather problematic.

 

Here's a page with a number of examples of overclaiming. Again since it's a collection of points to illustrate the problem one can't really generalize from it:
Confirmation and overclaiming of aerial victories during World War II - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As Biak stated in discussion over this topic I beleive I've also seen a number of cases of under reporting.

 

On partial credits in many cases would it be known that two planes had contributed to the shoot down? For instance the time Johnston was so badly shot up his P-47 was already in bad shape when the German plane found him. Who knows who the other pilot was he may have claimed a victory or not if the last plane had shot him down would he have claimed a solo victory? Then there are cases of fighters attacking a bomber formation getting shot up some and falling prey to defending fighters. At one point I ran across some stats for US bombers (in the Med I beleive) and they listed the source of the loss if known. Included was not just AA and fighters but AA+fighters and a goodly few were in that catagory.

 

No argument there - I used that specific example because I had Schmid's numbers for opposing forces and losses. Those can be hard to come by, especially for the 15th AF since they were opposed by Hungarian, Romanian and Bulgarian fighter units along with the GAF.

The inverse of that point also applies - isolated incidents of gross overclaims do not prove anything over the course of the war either. Most of the instances on the Wiki page you referenced are fighter vs fighter rather than bomber claims.

The biggest overclaim within my records would be for the 4 Apr 44 mission to Bucharest when the 449th was separated from the Wing in bad weather and went over the target alone. They were attacked by an estimated 80-100 aircraft in a running 45 minute fight losing 7 B-24s. Claims were submitted for 40 fighters destroyed and 19 probables. Actual fighter losses were probably on the order of 10 (someone on the old THC board had a Romanian source and supplied a number many years ago, which I have since lost). Including the probables, they overclaimed by about 6:1 for this one mission. That still doesn't approach 10:1 and certainly not for the duration of the air war. Without substantial documentation, that is a number I do not believe.

The number of fighters shot down by the heavies will probably never be resolved. Due to missing records on the GAF side, any attempt to reconcile claims vs. actuals is a daunting task. Reconciling HB claims from Figher claims becomes even more problematic. Just attempting to document 254 missions of one bomb group is a large enough task.

I have no problem believing that fighters accounted for many more enemy aircraft than did the heavies, but the gunners did have some effect. In the words of Johannes Steinhoff, "Of those who took part in the great aerial battles against the bombers, not many are still alive. The survivors agree with me that attacking these fortresses was not a pleasure. Those who like myself have flown these attacks and have maneuvered through the stream of innumerable bombers will never be able to forget this picture, and I am sure there is not one who could claim that he did not feel relieved when he had landed back home in one piece."

 

A point I made when I posted the link I believe.

But if you look at the ones involving USAAF particularly in Europe most involve both bombers and fighters.

Some of the difference may come from where in the claim chain one takes the numbers. Raw claims for instance could be that high or higher (note the 17 April claim at Confirmation and overclaiming of aerial victories during World War II - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia it's over 20:1!) Once the crews and intel people had a chance to compare notes I would expect the numbers to be quite a bit better. I believe the wiki article also makes a point that the claims became more accurate as the crews gained experiance. Makes me wonder if the source of the 10:1 number was someone looking at raw claims for some of the first USAAF bomber raids.

The number of fighters shot down by the heavies will probably never be resolved. Due to missing records on the GAF side, any attempt to reconcile claims vs. actuals is a daunting task. Reconciling HB claims from Figher claims becomes even more problematic. Just attempting to document 254 missions of one bomb group is a large enough task.

I have no problem believing that fighters accounted for many more enemy aircraft than did the heavies, but the gunners did have some effect. In the words of Johannes Steinhoff, "Of those who took part in the great aerial battles against the bombers, not many are still alive. The survivors agree with me that attacking these fortresses was not a pleasure. Those who like myself have flown these attacks and have maneuvered through the stream of innumerable bombers will never be able to forget this picture, and I am sure there is not one who could claim that he did not feel relieved when he had landed back home in one piece."[/QUOTE]

 

The reason I find this question so interesting, not to say significant, is if you agree with Freeman Dyson* (as I think I do) then one has to ask how many fighters the heavies shot down. This is an important question because if it was a significant number then obviously (if no Luftwaffe planes were being destroyed) the night fighter defences would have become stronger over time and therefore the advantage of a speed optimised heavy bomber would become relatively less.
I seem to remember that Galland (in his autobiography) wasn`t impressed with the ability of bombers to shoot down fighters, if I find the quotes I`ll post them. On the subject of which, can anyone get me a photocopy (or scan) of the index for "First & Last", my copy hasn`t got an index !

* That heavy bombers flying night raids would have stood a better chance of not being shot down had they got rid of all their defensive armament and instead been made to fly as fast as possible, possibly up to 50mph faster (assuming the bomb load wasn`t increased).

 

If you are asking the question in terms of Freeman Dyson, then why are you including the AAF and daylight raids?

 

It`s still interesting ! But as it happens Mosquitoes were sometimes used for daylight raids using high speed and no defensive armament so from that point of view whether significant numbers of attacking fighters were shot down (by the bombers) is still relevant.