How did kill claiming during age of dogfights even work? It seems

>>3347577

Throughout both world wars, the amount of kills that both sides claimed for their own fighter pilots borders on comical. And it didn't get any better in Korea, where both sides claimed that they were killing the other 10-to-1.

>>3347577
They had cameras.

>>3347594
Not all of them did.

>>3347577

most of them claimed like 1-5 kills, you only need something like three to be an ace, nobody was claiming 100 or anything outlandish

>>3347577
Pretty much all sides had certain rules on claiming a victory often requiring multiple witnesses. However, overclaiming was still an issue on all sides since people often didn't have the time to actually watch for an enemy to go down completely and crash. Sometimes an aircraft went down smoking but the pilot managed to recover after the enemy already lost sight.

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I'd say it also has to do with human nature of simply greed. Some countries rewarded their pilots with money for shooting down aircraft or destroying ground units in a sortie.
For e.g The U.S "Flying Tigers" would receive $500 from the KMT government for every 1 fighter aircraft shot down. The British in the Eastern Front received about £240 for shooting down 16 aircraft IIRC, which was enough to buy "2 detached houses back then". Soviet pilots would also get payed 1,000 rubles for a shot down plane, 5 ground attack sorties you'd be rewarded 1,500 rubles etc etc.
The other posts above me are also correct, but I'd say it's just simple greed that also might have affected Pilot kill claims.

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>>3350649
Basically you'd be getting someone's yearly salary if you were a pilot in the "flying tigers" and shot down a single plane/claimed to have shot down and received the reward
A famous ace, Pappy Boyington I believe inflated his kill count by 3 or 4 when he was in the "Flying Tigers".

>>3350649
Interesting, didn't know they got paid by kill/sortie. Aviators in WW2 were really a privileged branch, no wonder the ground forces usually despised them for their elitism.

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>>3350689
Not to mention they were receiving a regular salary on top, too. You could basically be set for life if you managed to shoot down just a few planes while others would still have to work after serving the army. Unfortunately I don't have any information on German pilots and what were their rewards, but I do know the Chinese and Soviets rewarded pilots for gunning down aircraft, Soviets adding the bonus of doing ground attack sorties.
Now regards to confirming kills, I have this piece on how Soviets would confirm kills:
>To get a confirmation one of the following "proofs" had to be available:
>1) Confirmation from at least two other pilots who took part in the fight
>2) Confirmation from ground troops
>3) confirmation from partisans
>4) verification on the seized territory

>These forms of verification were equal, but sometimes - especially if the fight took place over enemy territory, and there were only two fighters involved - the last "two" proofs were obligatory

>>3347577
wingmen to confirm the kill

>>3351800
you could just run a scam with your wingman claiming false victories and then splitting the reward money