Re: revising air war kill tallies

[Joe Brennan <jbren1@optonline.net>]

Re: Seidov book:
The criticism I have generally mirrors Diego's. As far as 25-30% of the
claims being correct this is my constant debate with Diego, I don't
understand exactly what he bases that number on. (Actually I think I do, a
Soviet estimate of their own possible inaccuracy based on info a US POW in
Apr 152 of actual US losses, but that loss info and their assumptions seem
to have been incorrect, perhaps POW disinformation). US records as is show
only a little over 10% of the combined Soviet/Chinese claims to be correct.

Certainly some other a/c were lost to air combat not counted in those
totals, but I know of no solid info indicating it's a really significant %
addition. Diego and I have debated those case by case for certain periods
but I feel in the end he simply re-asserts a loss was hidden or
misrepresented because that's what the US did in Korea.

For example many US a/c were lost the same day as MiG's claims but shown in
US records as not due to enemy a/c. But most, in my experience, can be shown
to have occurred for the reasons stated from multiple sources within the US
records and/or the times places and circumstances don't match the Russian
claims, and/or other combats that day can be found in the records closely
matching the Russian claims in time, place and circumstance but where no US
a/c were lost, or "extra" US losses are based on the myth that damaged US
a/c were generally not repaired (sometimes true for B-29's but not true for
other types).

As Cookie suggested there's a huge amount of declassified primary material
on the US side available to study. It's not easy or cheap (time, travel) but
doable. I don't feel I've done enough to "prove" that US records reflect
reality, not even close to enough, but nothing I've seen so far leads me to
believe otherwise. But the point is not my opinion but that people who say
real US loses were much higher have to show the discrepancies case by case
in detail to prove it, not just base it on claims that occurred the same day
as losses to other causes, and not just assert it in general.

Re: Futrell I think Seidov's book is very different from Futrell. Futrell
despite some surface similarity of "our boys" attitude is 1) very thoroughly
footnoted to primary sources; Naboka is not footnoted but we can guess it's
mostly 64IAK record info, but in Seidov it's harder to tell the source of
each piece of info 2) Futrell was working with the only info available at
the time, the Russian language authors had the other side when they wrote.

I don't think it's a matter of being hard on anybody and since only a few
books have been written reflecting the Russian side obviously each is
extremely valuable.

Joe
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "jose castillo" <felizguajiro@yahoo.com>
To: <KOREAN-WAR-L@listproc.cc.ku.edu>
Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2003 7:40 PM
Subject: Re: revising air war kill tallies


> cookie & joe b.-
>
> i wish i could read this soviet stuff myself, but
> alas, i only know one word in russian: tovarich. so
> that is why i am passing diego zampini's opinions
> along for comment. here's diego's take on the flaws in
> siedov's work:
>
> "The main criticism to Seidov's work is that he mostly
> collected the testimonies of veterans (I guess in many
> cases with their pilot's log)instead of working with
> the official records of 64th IAK. Certainly it is a
> fault of his work, but it did not make it less
> valuable.
>
> "Seidov also treats as confirmed kills what would
> actually be considered only claims (and there are
> plenty of them, considering that only 25-33% of the
> 1,106 Soviet claims are confirmed or have a good
> chance to be actual kills). But after all, during 40
> years, the US books have made the same mistake, and
> nobody criticized them. Why should be so hard with Mr.
> Seidov and ignore all the good things he has done?
> Good luck with Cookie and all the other members of
> KU."
>
> feedback?
>
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