The exaggerations in combat reports

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#1

I started to read a huge monograph about WW2 in the Pacific.
After I read about 100 pages I was suprised how big exaggerations in combat reports were on american and japanese side as well. Of course I know about such cases, it happend in every theatre of war on every side.
But yesterday I read about some U.S. airman (Cpt. Kelly) who reported sinking of BB “Haruna” in december 1941 (I can’t recall right now, I’m at work) and he was posthumously awarded with the Distinguished Flying Cross for that.
Soon it turned out that he hadn’t even hit “Haruna” once. Just two bombs were dropped into the sea in the BB’s vicinity.

I was wondering what caused such big exaggerations in reports. I understand that in combat the proper assessment of military actions can be very difficult due to extreme conditions (weather, flak, enemy fighters’ activity, high altitude, etc.) but in this case it was a HUGE exaggeration!

Do you know any interesting examples?
Why do you think such thing were reported?

#2

Well mate i think the exaggerations were caused not just the weather conditions but and personal factors ( and even political). Manies who fight in the war wish to has more personal “scores”. Moreover in ww2 there were a lot of cases when the the officials casulates and victors were changher under political motives.
There are a lot of simylar cases.
Yerstaday i found one interesting
the Wiki: The Battle of Britain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Britain

Both sides in the battle made exaggerated claims of numbers of enemy aircraft shot down. In general, claims were two to three times the actual numbers, due to confusion in the whirling air battles. However, post-war analysis of records has shown that between July and September the RAF claimed over 2,698 kills for 1,023 fighter aircraft lost to all causes, where 147 Polish pilots scored 201 out of that number, while the Luftwaffe fighters claimed 3,198 RAF aircraft downed for losses of 1,887, of which 873 were fighters. To the RAF figure should be added an additional 376 Bomber Command and 148 Coastal Command aircraft that conducted vital bombing, mining and reconnaissance operations in defence of the country.

So reading text above you can conclude that according germans sources RAF losed the Battle , but if you wath the Britain sources -Luftwaffe was fully crushed in 1940-41.
Where is true here?

#3

Yes Chevan, these figures were really high.
I think that in air combat reports the exaggerations were more often than in other armed forces. That’s why there were 3 definitions of succesfull attack on enemy airplane used to describe the result:

  • damaged,
  • probably destroyed,
  • destroyed.
    Sometimes fighter pilots couldn’t see their victim’s crash, but they decided to report it as “destroyed” because they thought that enemy’s aircraft is so badly damaged (or burning) that he wouldn’t land safely at base.
    I’m more inclined to accept such mistakes, than to accept the mistake I mentioned in previous post.

Of course some numbers were officially announced higher because of propaganda, etc. We all understand why. We can also agree that some fighters wanted to have higher number of kills than others, and they lied. :wink:
(In Cpt. Kelly’s case, I’m sure that his crew didn’t even thought about lying.
It would be easy for intelligence to confirm the sinking of japanese BB.)

I wanted to focus on “internal” military reports. Why some pilots or sailors reported something that never took place?

#4

very good post, but their some exaggerations that i would not want to see again.

#5

Correction:
Cpt. Kelly was leading 4 B-17s on 10 of December 1941 to attack BB “Haruna” (in fact - Cruiser “Ashigara”) north of Luzon.

Another exaggeration:
When Japanese started attack in Lingayen Bay (20th of December), four U.S. coastal guns (155 mm) reported a firefight with enemy ships. They confirmed sinking of 2 cargo ships and 2 destroyers. In fact none of japanese ships was hit.

#6

Well japanes themself constantly exaggerated the US casualtis. For instance the battel near Medui island where Japanes lost its fleet the Imperors minustry of propoganda represented as 'Great victory of japanes navy and AF" gived the quite fantastic figures of sinked US ships.

#7

I remember I read that according to Soviet reports there were destroyed very many Ferdinad selfpropelled guns ( http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/ferdinand/index.html ). These were very tough heavily armoured machines, that was difficult to destroy.
It is only after the war was found that Germany only produced very few of them (100 or so) and about half of them was in Africa.
Essentially almot all German self proppelled guns were called “Ferdinands” by the Red Army soldiers.

#8

I think there is a difference between an individual telling “big stories” (for whatever reason) and some national organization doing wartime propaganda.

Every country in the history of the world has always presented things in their favor, and played down enemy’s achievements. It would be silly to say things like “our soldiers are poor”, “our enemy is peaceloving”, “our own homefront hates us”.

National propaganda kind of “serves a rational purpose” (good or bad), but an individual telling amazing stuff can do a lot of harm - like a lonely soldier reporting “I saw a large enemy force” after seeing two soldiers, which can cause a large unit movements based on misinformation.

Germans, if i remember right, had a system/practice that every step of the command structure decreased the number of tanks destroyed in reports (for example), so the final numbers actually were reasonably accurate.

There are just so many reasons for incorrect reports, like:

  • In tank battles, the winner got hold of the battlefield, and could repair most of the damaged tanks (often reported destroyed).

  • In quick panzer-warfare, encircled infantry-troops could sometimes leave heavy equipment behind, and rescue themselves. So what do you report, 10,000 men originally encircled, or 2,000 really captured, or “enemy has lost battlestrength worth of 10,000 soldiers”…

Reminds me of one finnish WWII commander, who was extremely busy during major enemy attack, then, in the middle of the critical moments in nations history, he gets call from HQ, somebody asking “how many rifles has been captured in the sector since the beginning of the war?” Commander knew that trying to explain how absurd that question was, would have taken too long time, so he just made up a number and caller happily hung up. :smiley:

_

#9

Do you know any interesting examples?
Why do you think such thing were reported?

I have some:

Why ?

Overestimation of damage inflicted to an enemy aircraft…or simply malice.