Here are a few examples of what I'm talking about that seem highly exaggerated:
16th GIAP with 35 P-39 (various models) assigned flew 289 sorties and listed 79 kills for the month of April 1943. The kills are broken down as: 14 Bf 109E (were any of these even still flying in 1943?!), 12 Me 109F (given the rarity of this fighter that is quite a few particularly since production had long sense stopped on this model), 45 Me 109G (!!!), 2 Fw 190A, 4 Ju 88, 1 Do 217 (another rarity in the East) and 1 Ju 87D.
In the same period the unit stated it lost 19 P-39 plus two to accidents.
Of the individual pilots Aleksandr Pokryshkin claimed 10 kills (all Me 109) for the month. On April 9th he claimed seven alone but only received credit for two. On April 29 this pilot claimed 4 Me 109s shot down in a single engagement! Given the relatively small amount of ammo the P-39 carries I find this one hard to accept too. Grigorii Rechkalov claimed 7 Me 109 and a Ju 88 while Vadim Fadeev claimed 12 Me 109s for the month! At the time it was flying out of Krasnodar.
Overall, this regiment claimed 697 kills for the war.
With this much information alone it should be relatively easy to check Luftwaffe losses claimed in that area of the front against Soviet claims. I suspect the results will be far lower than the Soviet pilot's claims. I don't think that even the Soviet practice of having units with selected pilots of great skill could produce such results so consistantly.
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