It's funny this is stated about axis pilots, whereas Allied pilot, especially US-pilots were artificially "upgraded" to produce more aces. In 1944 and again in 1945 all "probables" were upgraded to "kills". This is documented and it leads to some really interesting numbers.
For example: After the war the US Ministery of Defense compared the numbers of subs sunk by US-Airforce and Navy to the actual numbers of subs sunk. It turned out that the US alone sunk about 1300% of the subs ever built by Germany including WW1.
Nevertheless all of the "corrected" aces were decorated as normal.
So, propaganda is one thing, but you have to consider 2 things:
1. All sides lied about numbers and statistics, always claiming to have won over the enemy, no matter if they really did. So in a way, even if stats were overexagerated, they were on all sides.
2. It's one thing to believe the propaganda, another thing to rely on real logs. And these were actually the basis of the kill-numbers claimed and they were quite difficult to obtain, as you had to have either physical proof for the kill or at least one eyewitness. If you couldn't come up with either, it was not a kill for the record.
|