Tero

Originally posted by Andreas: Knowing LW procedures, my guess is that the kill had been awarded to Rudel a long time before that (cf. the 1940 Ark Royal sinking). Option 2: by talking to his mateys, e.g. veterans from KG who continued to attack the ships, or to former staff officers of AG North, or officers from LW and SS formations who were engaged in the line containing the Oranienbaum bridgehead. There would only be hundreds of these guys, so of course it would be difficult to get in contact with them, since it is well known that former Wehrmacht folks never talked to each other again after the war. Option 3: He knew about all this (after the war) but as LW had awarded him for the sinking of Marat he did not bother about the fact some of his mateys were attacking static, not-so-very-well floating maritime shore batteries in the Leningrad/Kronstadt area.

Originally posted by undead reindeer cavalry: combined UK & US losses for the period of June 6th - July 7th would thus be around 526 tanks. Germans claim that during the period of June 6th - July 7th they killed 537 tanks. thus according to these rough figures German kill claims during this period were inflated by 11 tanks or in other words by 2%. Taking into account the 50% shave the initial kill estimate for the period would be anything up to 805 vehicles. Given the inescapable fact not all combat losses were write offs the 805 figure is not overly optimistic or unrealistic. Going by Red Army Winter War figures there could have been 3 combat losses for every write off so the total number of combat losses could be around 1472. (The actual Red Army figures give 1 in 5 combat losses were write offs.) this is of course very rough and inaccurate in many ways, but i think we need to get some kind of basic figures we can all agree before we proceed further. Agreed. So far the claim for overclaiming has been about selected claims made by individuals like Rudel and Wittman. [ March 15, 2007, 02:04 AM: Message edited by: Tero ]

Originally posted by michael kenny: Makes you wonder why the Germans automaticaly applied up to a 50% reduction to all tank kill claims when their 'absolutely genuine confirmed' figures are almost spot on the figure for auctual losses Because of the "ace" syndrome ? If you use individuals as role models and inspiration to the troops that would tend to make all contenders want to get in the programme. This is why we should perhaps start using the term "kill claim" when talking about kills claimed by individual soldiers and use the term "kill estimate" when talking about the official number of kills as estimated by the intel pukes.

Originally posted by michael kenny: Makes you wonder why the Germans automaticaly applied up to a 50% reduction to all tank kill claims when their 'absolutely genuine confirmed' figures are almost spot on the figure for auctual losses Because of the "ace" syndrome ? If you use individuals as role models and inspiration to the troops that would tend to make all contenders want to get in the programme. This is why we should perhaps start using the term "kill claim" when talking about kills claimed by individual soldiers and use the term "kill estimate" when talking about the official number of kills as estimated by the intel pukes.

Originally posted by michael kenny: You have a figure for Aug 5th of 764 Mediums in service. The figure I get by adding up all the units listed under 1st Army on August 5th is 1166. The list for the tank status of 1st Army for 12/8/44 states 2084 mediums. Reserves are given as 753 on 6/6/44. 177 on 12/8/44 116 on 14/8/44 Clearly then there is some confusion as to what exactly the status of 1st Army on this date. Agreed. The total number of "on hand" M4 75's and 76's for the entire ETO from July 20th until August 20th is 2557. The lost count for that period is given as 557. The weekly lists for 1st and 3rd armies give the lost count for that period as having been 431. Given some overlap in the report dates (1st army report dates are July 16th - August 19th, 3rd army August 1st - August 18th) I think it is safe to say that roughly 50-75 vehicles are "unaccounted for" between these two loss figures (army level vs ETO level). Yes and you only partialy quote the figures. The Units all list the tanks in repair and they do not have as many listed as you claim were damaged. That does not explain away why the 1st army reported 1102 operational tanks for the week July 16th-22nd and 748 for the week starting July 23rd. The reported losses for that week were 33. For the next week (July 23rd-29th) the losses were reported as having been 79 while they reported 656 tanks operational. Operation Cobra Started July 24th with breakthrough the German taking place July 28th. By Incredible Coincidence just during that week the number of the reported operational M4's in the spearheading Army dropped by 354 vehicles due to causes unknown beyond the figures already quoted. By Divine Providence the forces of the most richeous Allied Armies lost only 79 written off and an undisclosed number (50 ?) reported as being damaged. That would be the first instance I have read about where the attackers number of written off vehicles exceeds the number of damaged vehicles. And that is without taking into account mechanical failures and other causes. Wrong. The Unit tables give all those tanks in repair. I used the in service figures not the total strength figures. Reserves: 17/5/44 530 12/8/44 177 14/8/44 116 Ordnance reports on 16/8/44 719 M4 as total losses. The US Army ETO level losses were reported as having been 845 by August 20th. The weekly reports add up to 714 losses for raughly the same period (a few days fluctuation in report dates) which corresponds with your figure. That means that there is a gap of 131 between the weekly army level loss figures and monthly ETO level loss figures. The reserves dropped by 414 vehicles. That does not however indicate directly and accurately how many new vehicles were delivered to the units (or how many new formations were added to the roster). I'm assuming that there was a steady flow of replacement vehicles from the States to the base area in the UK even when Overlord was in progress. Otherwise the existing formations would have been understrength by a total of 305 vehicles because losses were not being replaced during the preceding operationally active period. The time before Cobra seems to have been fairly slow for the armoured formations since the number of operational vehicles peaked right before Cobra was launched. Which seems at least to me logical since the planners were reserving the armour for the planned breakthrough attack. They have been looked at in detail and we are both using the work of Rich Anderson. However I have a more complete list of sub Units and there is simply no 'mising M4's. You want it to be so because you believe the German propoganda No. I am not believing in the German propaganda. I'm believing in the Soviet score keeping which has listed all losses, combat losses, non-combat losses (ie mech break downs etc) and written off vehicles. The work of Rich is excellent but his Excell-files have some quirks in it, like calculating loss percentages using cumulative number of on hand vehicles, cumulative loss percentages with the total absolute number of losses. From what I know about calculating statistics that is flawed since the total number of on hand M4's in ETO was never 23 208. By his calculation the loss percentage for M4's was 12,3 (calculated from 23 208 on hand vehicles vs 2 855 losses). The average monthly on hand figure is 2 901. With that figure and 2 855 total losses the loss percentage reaches 98,41. That would mean that practically the entire fleet of M4's was replaced once during the European campaign. The flaw is you have no evidence that the dip in 1st Army numbers (in SOME records) is anything to do with tanks being disabled. The evidence is circumstantial. Extrapolating from the figures I have and the figures of the Red Army score keeping can not see how the Allied armies suffered only combat losses which were immediate write offs. When you determine how accurate the German kill claims were you really can not use only the number of written off vehicles. IMO the total number of combat losses is the number the kill claims should be compared to. This because the Allied kill claims could be verified since practically all German tanks in the west were combat losses so the total figures can be used. For the German kill claim accuracy that logic does not work because there is no data on the Allied combat losses which the Germans would have claimed, could have claimed and did claim as kills when in fact they were only disabled/KO'd but not subsequently written off. Where is the evidence that a) the claimed missing tanks were knocked out? Beats me. You are the one with all the pertinent unit histories. The Red Army kept records on causes for losses, I would assume the Western Allies did the same when they classed battle damaged vehicles. Even you can not deny a knocked out tank can be repaired and returned to service at a later date. The numbers for the 'in repair tanks' is wrong. I actually am not claiming they are classed as being "in repair" status. They are not listed as operational nor are they listed as losses. They must be somewhere since the montly on hand vehicle count is fairly constant at ~2 000 - 2 500 vehicles until November 20th when the on hand number of M4's in ETO jumps from 2832 to 4076 vehicles. December 20th the number jumps further to some 4 561 on hand vehicles. The loss figures for November and December are 495 and 585 respectively. As these tanks were (in your own words) only damaged then they would appear in the repair figures- they do not. So, where did they go ? You show August 5th 1st Army had 1166 M4's. During that week the 1st Army reported it had 656 operational M4's. The next week they reported 580 M4's as operational. That is either 510 or 586 vehicles not reported as being operational by the 1st Army HQ. Yet the units list them in their roster. 13 August 2084 medium tanks: 1st Army 823 on hand. 34 reserves and 53 in repair. 3rd Army 1261 on hand. 89 reserves. Does the on hand figure include the reserves and in repairs ? If not, all that adds up to 2 260 tanks in total. That is 176 difference. The ETO on hand figure I have for that week is BTW 2 557. Now compare this total for 1st/3rd Armies of 2084 mediums with the earlier report of 13 August that gives 1st Army 2084 mediums. There seems to be match! Except when you add the figures up and the total is over that 2 084 that match is not there. Some figures are using 3rd Army totals as part of 1st Army strength..........and of course the onlty time there is this problem is when 3rd Army is unleashed. Hmmm......do you think there might be a connection? There might be a connection. Keep going though, you never know you might get the 5:1 ratio one day.......... We'll see....

Originally posted by michael kenny: The total tanks in service: 23/7/44 = 1206. 5/8/44 = 1166. The figures I have used are from the list which gives the reported operational (serviceable) vehicles. The "on hand" figure I have lists the entire number of M4's in the entire ETO as having been 2093 between June 20th and July 20th ( 121 losses reported ) and 2557 between July 20th and August 20th (557 losses reported). Thus we see no dip in the individual unit start and end figures. Yes. But I have used the numbers as they appear in weekly strenght reports. You can not use month long periods to calculate the fluctuation in operational strenght to determine how many tanks were disabled (taken off the operational status for whatever reason for shorter than a period of 1 month) during the period. Only the written off figure is reliable. The 'missing' mediums can be explained by the gaps in the record and the replaced 75mm M4's. The thing is your numbers do not indicate how many new vehicles were delivered to the units as the number only gives the total number of vehicles in the roster irrespective of their operational status. It is clear that some units counted as being in 1st Army had been moved out. 4th AD can not be in 1st and 3rd Army at the same time so there is some ambiguity there. We would need detailed OOB's so we could sort this out but the suggestion that knocked out tanks were deliberately hidden is without foundation. I trust the figure for written off figure is totally accurate. The total number of KO'd vehicles is not deliberately hidden. The historians have looked at these records. There just has not been any call for to look at the figures this way. The Germans lost, right ? What does it matter how many tanks were rendered disabled during the fighting, the number of written off vehicles is known. Comparison to the German claims of how many tanks the KO'd clearly shows they overclaimed. And they did lose, right ? Since were are debating kill claims then the total number of knocked out and not just the number of written off vehicles must be determined. Due to the nature of the combat the Germans could not possibly (and propably would not deliberately) verify each KO'd vehicle to see if it conformed with the criteria set for awarding for kills. If the total number of KO'd vehicles is not accurate then there really in no base for calculating how much the Germans overclaimed. This because all is based on figure which is too low.

Originally posted by michael kenny: Reduction in 1st Army tank numbers. 22/7/44......1336 M4.....712 M5. (92 written off) 29/7/44.......891 M4.....541 M5. (38 written off) so we have 532 M4's and 312 M5's that were knocked out and hidden by the US? This would be a total of 624 M4's and 350 M5's knocked out in 7 days. How did you tabulate the figures ? Are you sure you are calculating the right collumns ? The written off are in the reduced number. That would make the number of lost M4's 445 with 92 of them written off and for the M5's 198 of which 38 were written off. I think not. total loss of M4's by 1st Army up to the end of July was 411 and here we are told a further 600 need adding You do not see the writing on the wall ? If you stick with the written off figure the German kill claims are grossly inflated. If you allow even a number of the "600 need adding" as having been knocked out by the enemy but not really ready to be written off then the German kill claim is not so very grossly inflated. I have been led to believe the US repair organization would rather replace a sufficiently badly damaged vehicle with a new one than spend the effort repairing it. They would harvest the vehicle for spare parts but it would not be written off. The Germans did not write off battle damaged tanks, why would the Americans have do that ?

Originally posted by michael kenny: 4th AD is included in 1st Army totals for 22/7/44 but was part of 3rd Army in August. That coupled with the switching of 160 old M4's accounts for the bulk(320) of your 'lost' figure. Add in the tanks in repair and I think we have the solution. Not really. It still does not add up. Where did the old, replaced vehicles go ? Even all of the vanished vehicles went to the being repair pool there has to be a reason for them to break down. God forbid any of them were combat losses. Just when there was heavy fighting going on. We would also need to know which tank battalions moved from 1st to 3rd. Unless of course you say the Battalions that show zero tanks during late July were completetly wiped out....... What was the reason they showed zero tanks ? They all had mechanical breakdowns just when the fighting started ? 744 M4's are shown as total losses up to 16/8/44 and some 600 are reported as damaged, repaired and sent back in to action. Making the number of M4's the Germans KO'd as high as 1344. Allowing 66% repaired due to non-combat related mechanical breakdowns the number is 944. The sources I have show either 748 or 845 M4 75's and 76's as lost up till August 20th.

Originally posted by michael kenny: Which also is when 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th AD's (and 2nd French AD) start moving around. 5 Armoured Divisions, do you think there might be a connection? That does not explain away the drop of operational vehicles from 1102 to 580 in previous three weeks. That was when the heaviest fighting is going on.

Originally posted by michael kenny: The overall number of all M4's in ETO do not drop at all right through the period you give. Yes. And that means what ? The replenishment system works and the attrition rate of the M4's is being outpaced by the repair, stockpiled vehicles in the replament pool and production. The overall number is not being debated (or even contested) here. It is the fluctuation in the number of vehicles racked in the operational status (ie. loss rates during operations) which is being examined to see if the inflated German kill claims could have really included vehicles other than the US Army (in this case) chalked up as written off. I can only assume some of the Tank Battalions were transfered out of 1st Army for some of the time because they dissapear of the lists for a week or two. You'll have to do better than that. The three week period I chose was the time when the Allied forces broke out from Normandy beach heads. AFAIK it was the 1st Army which bore the brunt of the fighting. From June 6th to July 15th (three weeks) the 1st Army reported heavier losses but the overall number of M4's kept rising steadily. It peaked during the week July 16th-22nd. The next week the number of operational M4's fell sharply and kept falling for three weeks (from 1102 to 580 operational M4's). During that time the 1st Army reported fewer losses than during the previous 3 weeks (283 for three weeks vs 256 for four weeks). They show zero tanks during the dip period but come back on line in August. It is important to notice that the higher number of reported losses coindides with the initial battles to secure the beach heads while the smaller number coincides with the start of the fluid phase of the fighting. Yet during that fluid phase the number of operational M4's is halved. Either the fabled mechanical reláibility of the M4 is bull**** or they kept chalking them off the operational status for other reasons (like being combat losses). Transferring mechanized units off 1st Army roster to the 3rd Army roster is one possibility but how would they have been able to keep the pressure on the retreating German units if they lost the sharpest edge while they were in pursuit because of the administrative reorganization ? Mind you: the 1st Army seems to have gotten an influx of M4's during the week August 13th-19th from the previous weeks 580 to 808 while the 3rd Army shows an influx during the week August 12th -18th from the previous weeks 301 to 794. The way I read this: if your proposition was correct it would mean that the units were chalked up in both 1st and 3rd Army rosters during that week. Or the units in both armies got replenished and/or both armies got an influx of brand spanking new formations. Given the fact both armies maintained a relatively steady number of operational M4's after that week I would think your assumption has no foundation.

Originally posted by michael kenny: Try this. from July 21st 160 M4 75mm traded in for 160 M4 76mm. also try and factor in some M4's in repair. 2nd AD/3rd AD 50+ in repair on August 2nd. OK. That does not bring the total tally anywhere near the reduction of M4 75's from 1102 to 748. Which I count as 354 reduction -33 admitted losses = 321 unaccounted for in the first week alone. The increase of number of 76's from 0 to 168 does not make the total tally of the 75's grow any less. Where did the replaced vehicles go ? If anything the number of unaccounted for M4 75's increases by 168 from 321 to 489 with the 76's being thrown in to the strengt figures. The figures grow even worse when the next week shows the reduction of M4 75's by 92 and the M4 76's by 73 vehicles = total of 165 with only 91 admitted losses. If I have time later I might go through the individual tank units and give you the weekly losses for every single unit. Please do. That would be very interesting.

Originally posted by michael kenny: Give me an example. British kill claims on DAK tanks. Made during the fighting, mind you. Not the figures given after DAK folded. You lost me there but I presume you are refering to Allied claims being inflated. I have news for you. This is well known and allowed for. The only Unit histories that completely ignore this fact seem to be German. No. I am referring to Allied loss figures being deflated by discounting vehicles being repaired due to combat damage. The Red Army tallied (at least during Winter War) all instances of vehicles being unable be in the duty roster with specific causes given for the absence to boot. AFAIK the Allied airforce records on serviceable planes for specific time periods are accessible. All I can say is you clearly have no understanding of the Allied loss figures. M4 losses in ETO is reported to have been 3155 vehicles (both 75 and 76mm variants). 1st Army strenght reports for three selected weeks show: 75 mm models Date and days, operational, losses 16-22 Jul 1944,7, 1102, 33 23-29 Jul 1944,7, 748, 79 30Jul-5Aug 1944,7, 656, 68 figures for 76mm models during the same period 168, 0 95, 12 108, 6 Strenght fell by 60 in three weeks but only 18 were reported lost. During those two first weeks of the period the 1st army reported 124 M4's lost. Yet a total of 427 fell off operational status from July 22nd and July 23rd. From July 29th to July 30th the strenght report show a further drop of 79 vehicles with 74 being reported lost. So, the 1st army lost 198 Shermans but misplaced 414 further vehicles in three weeks. Had this kind of unreported vanishing, ie. gross negligence happened in the Red Army the men responsible would have been shot. You hint at deception but have nothing at all to support the claim. I would not call it deception. I call it cooking the books if you lose 618 vehicles off the duty roster but claim you lost only 198. Unless of course the vanished vehicles went to the the 3rd and the 9th armies right in the middle of the hardest fighting in Normandy. Yes they wanted to hide the fact that it took 5 Shermans to destroy every Panther!!!! Absolute b***locks. You are sure? Why? Oh yes because the super-Tigers each knocked out 10 Shermans. 198 reported lost, 414 vanished from the roster. The actual tank losses for both sides in Normandy were in less than 2:1 in the Germans favour When talking about write offs. Yes. Which German Unit account includes any of its damaged tanks as a loss? That is beside the point. The point is kill claims made on vehicles not being written off. Which you insist is inflating. [ March 09, 2007, 02:37 AM: Message edited by: Tero ]

Originally posted by michael kenny: There should be no debate about this because the Germans themselves knew the claims (in Russia) were inflated. They applied an official reduction because they noticed the mistake. Yes. But if you care to examine the links provided by me and URC on the Red Army tank losses during Winter War you will find that the Red Army score keeping for its own tanks show that actual write offs are 1/10th of what they themselves tallied as combat losses. (EDIT: total losses actually, for combat losses it is 1/6th.) They can say they lost only some 300 tanks during Winter War but for some reason they steer clear of the number of combat losses which is close to 1900. The kill v damaged debate is not really valid. When talking about kill claims and awards its is very valid. Read any German account by a tank unit and you will notice that they never ever mention damaged tanks as lost yet when writing about Allied Units they include every single possible tank casualty as a confirmed kill: Indeed. What about the Allied units and their kill claims vis-a-vis handling of damaged enemy vehicles ? 'Super Panzer leader Hans held up an entire English Division and destroyed 40 tanks. His battered Tiger was towed back to have its turret replaced, tracks mended and engine repaired. His driver and loader were killed but we lost no tanks today.' In contrast "Super tank company commander Tom made a valiant effort to break through the enemy defences today. His forces shot up loads of enemy troops and vehicles, including 5 formidable Tiger tanks. The attack failed but the enemy casualties were high. Own losses were 4 tanks. The force was drawn from the frontline for repair and replenishment so it could be deployed again in full strenght in a few days." For far too long we have had to read about double digit kill claims for the Panzers when in fact they did not do as well as they like to think. You can read about the 5 shermans for one Panther tale but when you find the matching figures they do not support the uber-panzer myth. There are dozens on Panzer Unit histories around but not one of them take into account the 50% reduction in kill claims when advancing their claims. They never even mention it. Have you ever seen Western Allies keep score on their own vehicles the way the Red Army did. How is it possible the Red Army tallied 1900 combat losses while their write offs were only 300 ? Makes me at least think the Red Army reporting was more honest than the Western Allied. I'm sure there are records of Allied recovery and repair effort around but for some reason they are not taken into account when tallying combat losses. IMO a combat loss counts as a kill even when the vehicle is not a write off. [ March 09, 2007, 01:09 AM: Message edited by: Tero ]

Originally posted by Andreas: As Michael points out, it has more to do with what was needed to make a good Signal article then with reality. Me thinks this debate is hung up too much on the personal claims/awarded kills of some prominent figurehead individuals. IMO it is irrelevant historically if the kill claims/awards numbered 20+ tanks and they were all awarded to Wittman (or Rudel) if the actual losses correspond accurately with the claims/awards.

Originally posted by Andreas: As far as I know the German kill award system was only recognising claims for TWOs, not for temporary kills. That was the Finnish way too. Nevertheless that applies (in the Finnish practise) only to kills awarded to individuals. The Finnish official kill estimate figure for tanks is not the sum of the kills awarded to the individuals. In that figure every KO's tank is tallied as each contributed to the success/failure of the Finnish forces. A unit would report (say) 10 tanks KO'd during a battle and that X were recovered by the enemy . (Finnish tankers also collected needed spares during the summer of 1944 from the KO'd vehicles if the vehicles could not be recovered to the rear by the Finnish troops. But I digress... ) The way I understand it the tank had to burn or suffer catastrophic damage to count. That is my understanding too. As for Wittmann, if you look at this article, you'll see it credits him with 24 tanks (20 Cromwells and 4 Firefly), so no, the claim of 20+ does not include Bren carriers and HTs. OK. Does that BTW make the figure any less credible ? In other words: is the article relying on Wittmans claims or the official unit history ?

Originally posted by michael kenny: Then we can say that the 130 odd Tigers in Normandy were 'killed' some 300 times? If they were KO'd, repaired and KO'd again more than once then yes, they were killed 300 times. They were written off only once. A damaged tank is not a kill. A damaged (KO'd) tank not fighting is killed. Wether or not it is a total loss is irrelevant. Wounded is not killed. Comparing humans to machines is not relevant. For Wittmann I am saying that the absolute maximum number of tanks he could have even hit at Villers Bocage was 10-12. It is not even confirmed that it was he who hit all of those 10 as 2 other Tigers were firing at the same Targets. He was cited as destroying 20+ AFAIK the claim count given includes also Bren carriers and other assorted vehicles and not just tanks. The Wittmann kill claims can be compared to the actual losses. Fey's claim is completely without any matching Allied accounts What is missing is the daily (weekly, monthly) Allied strenght reports which would indicate how many vehicles were being repaired during given timeframe. We know some 33 000 M4's were produced but I have never seen how many were written off as combat losses and how many went through the repair facilities/units. That figure should not be too hard to collect from the most excellent Allied archives but somehow the figure has never been of interest to the prominent historians. All we talk about is how inflated the kill claims were but we can not verify how many tanks were actually killed. In the East(where records are scarce) multiple scores are routinely claimed. Who says the records are scarse ? It is rather ironic the most accurate actual KO/write off figures I have seen are for Red Army tank losses during Winter War at as seen here . In the West (where we have Allied loss figures) There are very few such claims. We have the loss figures ? Where ? Taken together with their own method of applying a 50% reduction in claims I think we can safely say that German kill claims were inflated. Agreed. They are inflated just like anyone elses. Then again when a KO'd tank is repaired and sent to the fighting again then it can be killed more than once.

Originally posted by Hetzer38: ...looks (and sounds) to me that the Ju87G fires 5 shots (bursts?) in the first and 3 shots (bursts?) in the second attack-run...? My guess is single shots in rapid succession rather than "controlled bursts" at when in full auto. The boat busting film does show single ranging shots followed by rapid succession shots. EDIT: after viewing the first vid it could be the full auto Stukas might be D5's with 20mm wing guns. I could not make out the BK37 bulges under the wing. [ March 07, 2007, 11:29 PM: Message edited by: Tero ]

Originally posted by Hetzer38: ...looks (and sounds) to me that the Ju87G fires 5 shots (bursts?) in the first and 3 shots (bursts?) in the second attack-run...? My guess is single shots in rapid succession rather than "controlled bursts" at when in full auto. The boat busting film does show single ranging shots followed by rapid succession shots. EDIT: after viewing the first vid it could be the full auto Stukas might be D5's with 20mm wing guns. I could not make out the BK37 bulges under the wing. [ March 07, 2007, 11:29 PM: Message edited by: Tero ]

Originally posted by michael kenny: A damaged tank is not a destroyed one. It counts as a kill though if the crew bails out and hauls ass to the rear and the vehicle is combat ineffective for the remainder of the battle. However I can categorically state that both the Wittmann and Fey claims are grossly inflated. Are you comparing kill claims to written off vehicles ? It is striking that the high German kill rates claimed for Russia are not repeated in the West. Hmmmmmm.... the Germans for all intents and purposes wrote the Western version of the history of the Eastern Front. Given the Cold War angle wouldn't it be awfully convenient if your former enemy and newly found ally did great damage to your perceived new enemy while doing next to necligible damage to your own gear ?

There was a real possibility in early 1940 there would have been British troops in the Eastern Front. Fighting both the Soviets and the Germans in Arctic Norway, Sweden and Finland.

Originally posted by Broompatrol: you can bet that the footage of the aircraft was spliced to the gun camera footage. Unless there was a camera man on the ground in front of the tank watching the attack? My point being that with the liberties taken with foley and editing it is hard to really know what the context is of any given video. Very true. That is why these clips should be viewed with extreme prejudice in mind. The attack method for example could be verified from the clip but beyond that the only data of real value should be derived from viewing unedited originals.

Originally posted by Andreas: And you simply have to invent things I never said to have an argument. Why? Are you just sad that way, are you too dumb to read what I write, or do you enjoy trying to intentionally stir things up? Not particularly. Just noting that you are willing to admit ships as being chalked up as being sunken (by Japanese for example) with the criteria as described and pretty much agreed by both of us. for some reason you will not admit the Marat to that cathegory even when it conforms with the criteria. Can't tell if your vehemence is directed at Rudel specifically or if it is fuelled by your anti-Nazi and/or perceived hero worshipping predisposition. It seems to me your predisposition requires a kill claim made by a German being contested just because.

Originally posted by Andreas: And you simply have to invent things I never said to have an argument. Why? Are you just sad that way, are you too dumb to read what I write, or do you enjoy trying to intentionally stir things up? Not particularly. Just noting that you are willing to admit ships as being chalked up as being sunken (by Japanese for example) with the criteria as described and pretty much agreed by both of us. for some reason you will not admit the Marat to that cathegory even when it conforms with the criteria. Can't tell if your vehemence is directed at Rudel specifically or if it is fuelled by your anti-Nazi and/or perceived hero worshipping predisposition. It seems to me your predisposition requires a kill claim made by a German being contested just because.

Originally posted by Sergei: Except the start of Soviet offensive, 9th of June 1944. Then every piece of Russian artillery, whether Kronshtadt or fortification batteries, was utilized. The range limit from Kronstadt is still in effect anyway. Btw. Tero, the front line wasn't in Terijoki but between Kuokkala (Repino) and Siestarjoki (Sestroretsk), so some 8 km closer to Kronshtadt. And so it was. My bad. Add ~10 km to the effective range the Finnish troops were in. Interesting read! Indeed. Thanks for the heads up.

Originally posted by Sergei: Except the start of Soviet offensive, 9th of June 1944. Then every piece of Russian artillery, whether Kronshtadt or fortification batteries, was utilized. The range limit from Kronstadt is still in effect anyway. Btw. Tero, the front line wasn't in Terijoki but between Kuokkala (Repino) and Siestarjoki (Sestroretsk), so some 8 km closer to Kronshtadt. And so it was. My bad. Add ~10 km to the effective range the Finnish troops were in. Interesting read! Indeed. Thanks for the heads up.