Confirmation and overclaiming of aerial victories during World War II

In aerial warfare, the term overclaiming describes a combatant (or group) that claims the destruction of more enemy aircraft than actually achieved. The net effect is that the actual losses and claimed victories are unequal.

Honest overclaiming typically occurs in one of two ways: (1) more than one fighter pilot attacks the same target in quick succession and when they see it destroyed each claims a victory in good faith, and (2) a target is hit and appears to go down, but the pilot is able to land the plane. In some instances of combat over friendly territory a damaged aircraft may have been claimed as an aerial victory by its opponent while the aircraft was later salvaged and restored to an operational status. In this situation the loss may not appear in the records while the claim remains confirmed.

Most discussion of overclaiming centers on air combat during World War II, because of the significant amount of air combat relative to conflicts before or since.

German methodology for confirming aerial victories
The Luftwaffe had, at least in theory, a very stringent approval process for the confirmation of aerial victories.
 * Without a witness, a Luftwaffe fighter pilot had no chance to have his victory claim confirmed. Such a claim, even if filed, would not pass beyond group level.
 * The final destruction or explosion of an enemy aircraft in the air, or bail-out of the pilot, had to be observed either on gun-camera film or by at least one other human witness. The witness could be the German pilot's wingman, another in the squadron, or an observer on the ground.

In practice, however, even in the early stages of the war, overclaiming by the Luftwaffe occurred. As the war entered its final, chaotic phase in 1945, many German aces' claims from late 1944 onward were left unvalidated due to the breakdown in administration within the Luftwaffe, and at times bore little relationship to reality.

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.