http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/ubb/Forum4/HTML/000016.html

It was clear yourself and Zetterling took a dim view of Rudel's claim and I wanted to clarify how you came to certain conclusions.

1. Rudel stated in an interview that he believes his actual destroyed tanks was 1500, Peter C Smith makes mention that Rudel's claims were reduced by 25-30%. How do you know that the 519 hasn't already been adjusted by the OKW as you stated in your post?

2. What methodology did the Russians apply to a tank to determine if it was destroyed by air attack or by opposing ground force? Surely a penetrating hit from a 3.7 Flak 18 would look like a kill from an opposing ground force AT gun?

3. In the appendix of Peter C Smith's 'Junkers Ju87 Stuka' book, there is a list of planes damaged or destroyed during Kursk, one of which was a G-1, other sources point to there being several Gruppes with a G-1. Surely it's reasonable to assume that Rudel also had a G-1 with him?

4. Aren't there several other instances aside from Kursk where you can count Rudel's claims against soviet tank losses?

So clearly, in NW Europe in the ETO, the U.S. Air Force was over claiming tanks killed from the air by a factor of 10.

So...should we take Rudel at face value?

I was able to check one German claim during the Battle of Kursk, which was Meyer's Hs-129 attack that supposedly killed 40 tanks. In this case, I was able to determine because of the locations specified that the target could have only been one brigade of the II Guards Tank Corps and I had their records. Based upon their records, we estimate they lost 9 tanks that day, and were facing not only German air, but German armor, German anti-tank, German infantry and German artillery. So probably the air attack was not responsible for all the kills (and maybe not even the majority). So again, gross overclaiming of ground kills by a German at Kursk.

So...should we take Rudel at face value?

In my book on Kursk (which is finally coming out this October), I was able to compare Soviet air kill claims to German air losses, and I compared Soviet armor kill claims to German armor losses. Needless to say, they were overclaiming, both overall and individually (I did cross-check to some ace claims). Conversely, I also checked German air kill claims to Soviet air losses and German armor kill claims to Soviet armor losses. They were much more accurate in aggregate, but I could not check hardly any individual claims because Soviet losses were high enough on each day that it was hard to rule out too many claims.

So, I have no doubt that Rudel did a lot of damage and killed a lot of material, but I have no way to confirm his count. Every time I or someone else objective is able to test these counts, they seem to be overly inflated.

Anyhow, this is all discussed is depth in my 1660 page book that is coming out this October.

Hope this helps.

"It is claimed that during the course of the war, Rudel destroyed 519 tanks, 80 self-propelled guns, a battleship, one or two cruisers, a destroyer, 70 assault boats, 800 or 1,000 vehicles, 150 artillery pieces, four armored trains and scored nine or eleven air victories (about 400 of his sorties were in an Fw-190, from which these air victories were claimed). These claims have not been confirmed. He was shot down over thirty times, several behind enemy lines, and was wounded five times. On six or eight occasions he landed behind enemy lines to rescue a downed Stuka crew. He flew 2,530 operational sorties, which may be the all- time record number of combat sorties flown by any pilot."

The bolding was not in the original.