Luftwaffe victory claims - 4

[Richard T Eger]

From 12 O'Clock High!:

CJE
Touchy topic: inflated "kills"
Fri Sep 20 12:35:54 2002
193.253.253.238

When I started studying German fighter aces score-boards in the late 60's, the usual trend was that they inflated their "kills" by 200% or more!
How come that "Johnnie" Johnson only claimed 33 victories when Hartmann got ten times more?
Then William Green published a trail-blazing article in Flying Review and, suddenly, German scores were more or less taken at face value, except by a few conservative people.
Since then, American and British records have been made available to anybody and in the 90's ex-Soviet records have appeared here and there.
Now it is clear that German aces did inflate their personal scores, but the problem is to understand to which extent.
I have never believed that a "claim" could automatically match a loss on the other side.
Only the ratio claim/loss is interesting.
As far as I can ascertain, 8th AF fighter units reached a ratio of 3 German losses for 4 US claims.
What about the Luftwaffe units on the Eastern front?

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Peter
Re: Touchy topic: inflated "kills"
Fri Sep 20 14:37:46 2002
161.114.126.52

When I started studying German fighter aces score-boards in the late 60's, the usual trend was that they inflated their "kills" by 200% or more!
How come that "Johnnie" Johnson only claimed 33 victories when Hartmann got ten times more?


How many missions did Johnsson and Hartman have each? Divide kills per mission and I think you will find something interesting.

Peter

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Dénes Bernád
The 'trick', Peter, is...
Fri Sep 20 20:55:48 2002
204.101.53.233

...that J. Johnson, and any other Allied pilot, must have survived first that many missions Erich Hartmann and other high scoring Luftwaffe pilots flew.
From the Allies side, only the Soviets flew a similarly high number of missions and their top scoring ace did not achieve, by far, as many 'kills' as the top Luftwaffe Experten did.

However, returning to the original question posted by CJE, I am looking forward anxiously for a healthy debate on this truly 'touchy' topic.

Quoting only from memory, a noted British researcher wrote that in June 1941, the RAF submitted 5 victory claims for a single actual German loss. Any comments?

Finally, can anyone summarize here the calculation Prien, Stemmer, et al did in their new groundbreaking multi-volume Jadgwaffe book on the Battle of Britain victories and losses and the ratio between these data?

Dénes

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

CJE
Misunderstanding
Fri Sep 20 17:19:54 2002
80.14.218.113

It's not what I personally think but what was used to be said at that time by many ex-Allied air force fighter pilots.

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

peter
My misstake, sorry CJE
Fri Sep 20 18:15:20 2002
213.114.186.157

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

John Rocks
Who wrote the history
Fri Sep 20 20:55:10 2002
12.224.76.230

I don't think the Soviet losses are that far different from German claims.

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

CJE
Only facts
Sat Sep 21 01:11:06 2002
80.11.88.180

I am interested in this debate, because nowadays "I think" or "I believe" must give way to true facts and figures.

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

John Rocks
Agreed
Sat Sep 21 01:53:02 2002
12.224.76.230

Wholeheartedly - I am in total agreement that, history needs to be revised from propaganda to facts. Some do not like “revision,” but no one ever said that the truth didn’t hurt.
Ok - so the victorious governments had there fifty + years to imbed in us what they wanted us to believe, and now it is time for the truth to be told.

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

willaume
10 ero cents
Tue Sep 24 15:32:26 2002
208.237.100.114

If it can help J.Jonhson checked Pips victories and was satified with the result (Ie they were genuine vitories).

It is very difficult to match claim/cerified victories to losses.
I am studying the fw 190 and IN the PRO there is note saying that a FW190 seen diving at 3000 f should not be considered destroyed as it can recover from the dive.
hence we can subodarate that claim where confirmed like that.

the FW 190 busted a fairly big cloud of blue smoke when engagine WEP or Erhonte notleistung, when under attack the escape was usually to flick on the back and dive.

If i was a allied pilot shooting at it and seeing the plane do that. I would considere that i have hit it and seing it dive like a stone i would considere it as probable or even destroyed. or i would stand as a witness to a mate claim
"sir yes sir, me old china there, he shoot the hun and down he went like stone, honest guv"
Well may be the fw 190 was not even hit.... or may be it was and crashed some where.

And that is just a bout a plane i know fairly well.

A point that i would like to make as well is that if you look at losses reports. There is a fair amount of plane that crashed in emmergency landing well what caused the emmergency in the first place, is it an over claim (well it went back home), is it a valid victories well it was destroyed)?

From my personal experience looking at ORB and claim reports.
US pilots seems to have been a little but heavy on the destroyed, probable and hit, but not that much over the other alied. However confirmation seems to have been much more lax (there seems to have waves claim what you want and no sorry i can no see the serial number of the plane on fire).

Uk and german confirmation seems to have been a bit more moderated.
Up to mid 44 german personal claim seems to have been the most reliable of the lot (which does not prove it was accurate).

you can find in german pilot war diary a few example of i did not claim it becasue i did not have any witness)
(that probably was contabilised after mid 44).

That being said even i can find quite easilly counter example of that. At the end this is just observation bases on fact but by far not on the big picture

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Juha
Overclaiming
Sat Sep 21 12:53:32 2002
62.236.238.17

Hello
at least JG 5 had problems with its claims, theirs seems to be badly inflated when compared to info on known Soviet losses as given by for example Rune Rautio or to even known Soviet stregthfigures. Those JG 5's claims didn't produce the results expected on Soviet air activities, either.
Also Soviet claims against Finns are very heavily inflated, they 'shot down' the Finnish AF many times over. One must anyway remember that the Finns repaired many a/c that some other AFs might have declared written-offs, so maybe the what I called as 'grey zone' (meaning situations were one side can claim a legitime kill and the other side wrote it down as damaged but repairable) was larger than usual.

Also up north there might have been 'backwater effect' in action. I mean situation where the area command wants to be noted by higher HQs, whether they were in Berlin, in Moscow, in London or in Washington D.C doesn't matter, and because one of the best ways to get scarce resources to ones own area, and publicity and promotions and so on is good results, it took a little bit more lax attitude to claimverifications. After all their pilots had to live in difficult conditions long way from fleshpots and from their homes, why lower their morale even further by being too critical on their claims.

And the third factor is that up north the combats were fought over water or over very sparcely populated wilderness. And those circumstances tended to increase overclaiming. The British observed very early in the war that the AA batteries at coast were more efficient than those in inland. They studied the phenomenon and came in conclusion that while there were some real benefits in being situated at coastal areas the greatest explanating factor was that put it simply, if one claims a number of kills over Manchester soon someone began to ask, where were the wrecks, not so if one says that he shoot down a number of planes off Dover. Also in Finland, I think, the worst overclaimings happened during the BIG aircombats over the Gulf of Finland in 1942-43. It was altogether understandable because when in a big swirling airbattle one fire at enemy plane and soon afterwards saw a plane splashing into water. Also some of his mates saw that and confirmed the kill. Question is how many other pilots saw the splash and thought that it was theirs victim. Faraway observation posts were not reliable witnesses and radiointelligence was not foolproof either. So it was very difficult to gauge the real losses.

Just some of my thoughs.

Juha

Ps. When Hannu Valtonen in his Luftwaffen Pohjoinen sivusta (1997) p.354 compares the biggest claims made by III./JG 5 during the summer 1944 to the Rautios info he found out that the Germans claimed 7* or more than the actual Russian losses in those combats according to Rautio. And for example during June 42 German fighters claimed in the north 125 and German AA 3 Soviet planes when according to Rautio Soviet losses were during that month 52 by enemy fighters, 9 by enemy AA and 13 by unknown causes. This is on page 190.

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

John Rocks
Overclaiming
Sat Sep 21 16:14:50 2002
12.224.76.230

You bring up some very valid points.

This is on the Dieppe Raid (Operation Jubilee) in part 2 of 4 http://www.warships1.com/W-hist/HSII_Dieppe2.htm
50% down page are the air battle statistics in Chapter V

Allied Claims: 1/4 of 299f - 175b = 118.5 + planes. Actual 48 planes - differential +70.5 planes overclaimed.

German Claims: 112 plane, Actual 106 plane - differential +6 planes overclaimed.

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Bobbie
JG 5 and overclaiming
Sun Sep 22 03:23:03 2002
205.188.209.172

Hi Juha:

How do you know it was just JG 5 that overinflated their scores? Wouldn't you say that conditions anywhere on the Russian Front were deplorable? They didn't have the highest scores those went to Hartmann, Barkhorn, & Rall who were much further south. Just curious as to where you got the info on JG 5 and inflation of kills? I'm not defending them, saying that the scores couldn't have been overclaimed, because you did make some valid observations. I'd just like to know what sources you used.

Thanks!
Bobbie

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Juha
Re: JG 5 and overclaiming
Sun Sep 22 09:50:54 2002
62.237.17.124

Hello Bobbie
as I wrote my source was Hannu Valtonen's Luftwaffen Pohjoinen Sivusta. Keski-Suomen Ilmailumuseon julkaisuja 6. ISBN 951-95688-5-9. Jyväskylä 1997. Valtonen have made extensive archival researches in German archives and have contacts with other researchers who have had researched these claim and loss matters many years in German and Russian archives. According to forewords Juri Rybin and Rune Rautio (from whose works Valtonen got his Soviet losses) are in oppinion that they know almost all the losses of the Soviet Northern Fleet's AF and that at most 5% of the losses of the Soviet 7th AF and its predecessors are still missing, the exception being Pe-2 losses, of which up to 30% may be missing.
The further proof of the overclaiming in the north is the lack of change in Soviet air activity after claimed heavy losses. After all also to Soviets the extreme north was a side show and they also suffered on lack of resources there.

JG 52 (Hartmann, Barkhorn and Rall flew most of their missions with that unit)usually operated in the main battle area of the Wehrmacht and most of the time over land, some of their aircombats were over Black Sea.
And I would say that the enviroment is harsher north of Artic Circle than in Ukraina, I happened have spent some of my holidays in both areas.

Juha

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Bobbie
JG 5 overclaims
Sun Sep 22 21:48:00 2002
64.12.96.206

Hi Juha:

Thanks for the response. So what do you think their actual scores were? For example; Ehrler and Weissenberger each claimed about 200 kills, what do you think would be closer to the truth?

Thanks!
Bobbie

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

mars
JG 5 overclaims
Mon Sep 23 00:44:04 2002
64.156.106.69

According to Christer Bergstrom's "Black cross/red star":
On May 10,1942,6 10.(Z)/JG 5 Bf-110 claimed shot down 13 soviet aircrafts between 1645 and 1700, among these victorys Weissenberger claimed 5 alone, except the Zerstorer pilot's claims, 5 Bf-109 claimed shot 3 more Soviet aircrafts in the same engagement,but however Soviet 2GSAP only suffered 5 Hurricanes lost.

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Juha
Claims vrs actual victories
Mon Sep 23 08:51:51 2002
62.236.237.4

Hello Bobbie
all I can say that the true figures are under the numbers of official victories. The figures Mars gave in his message gave a hint, in that battle Weissenberger claimed 5 and the Soviets loss 5 but there were also 11 other german claims. So all you can gauge is that Weissenberger shot down 0 - 5 a/c, probably somewhere between. But you have no easy way to make an educated quess which was the most probably number.
Because I think that some pilots were more reliable claimers that others I don't think that the multipliering the official victories of a certain pilot by the established ratio of the true victories to the official victories of a certain war theather is a right way to do. And after all I think that the exact number of somebody's true victories isn't very important and find out the right number is impossible or at least very, very difficult. It is possible in many one to one combats ond in some small scale airbattles in which overclaiming happened to be in small scale or nonexist to allocate true victories to the participiants but in cases of big airbattles and even smaller when there is much overclaiming I think there is no way to allocate the true victories to the participiants in any reliable way. Best we can do in a reasonable input is to establish the true results of airbattles and maybe reach some reasonable estimate how those kills divided among the participating units, if we are lucky.
One way to try to allocate true victories to individual pilots is to go through the combat reports of each side (if they have survived to this day and if you can get access to them) and then try to reconstruct the battle and after that we may be able allocate at least part of the victories to certain pilots, for example if only one of the claimers have claimed that his (or in some cases her)victim crashed into a lake and we know that one of the enemy planes really crashed into lake we can make an assumption that we have a match. But even this case we must consider the other aspects of the reports, too.
Other way is that we try to go through the claims of the pilots of certain schwarme/staffel/squadron and try to establish from those cases were we can allocate a true victories to certain pilots some sort of pattern of reliabilities of their claims and after that made some rough estimations how the rest of the unit's true victories might have been distributing among its members. But that is more like a quess.
I think that the Germans had resourches to try to conquest Murmansk only in 1941 and during that time Moscow, Leningrad and Ukraine were much more important to Soviets than Murmansk . And only part of the JG 5 or its predecessors operated against Soviets most of the time, other part operated in western and southern Norway against Western Allies, or more rightly tried to protect German assets in those areas against airattacks of the Western Allies.

Juha

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Bobbie
JG 5 and Murmansk
Sun Sep 22 22:03:53 2002
64.12.96.203

Hi Juha:

I just read your postscript and noticed your ratios, however I do beg to differ on your opinion that the area in question was just a side show for the Soviets. Murmansk was the major port bringing in a substantial amount of the Allied supplies and weapons into the Soviet Union with a railway link down into the heart of the battlegrounds. Therefore I do think that it was a vital area for the Russians to have protected. The Germans tried to capture it several times and that's why JG 5 was there, to disrupt the flow of much needed supplies to the Soviets.

Thanks!
Bobbie

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

John Svendsen
inflated "kills"
Sat Sep 21 21:59:00 2002
208.61.78.88

Just need a clarification to your post. Are you speaking of pilot 'claims' or authenticated 'kills'? By authenticated, I mean shoot downs okayed by higher headquarters. There has always been a large disparity between the two in all air forces in all wars, large & small. It's easy to say claims are inflated. Heck, even kills verified by other pilots witnessing the combat have proven to be wrong..ie, engine fires going out and the plane nursed home, 'fatal spins' recoved from at lower levels out of sight, etc... Even the RAF admitted that authenticated kills didn't match the Ultra messages they where reading but was needed for morale purposes. Don't mean to nit pick but the post seems to be as general and foggy as the line between "claims & official kills". Just my 2 cents worth.
Cheers,
John

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

CJE
Official victories
Sun Sep 22 05:34:48 2002
80.14.218.61

Sorry for having been vague.
I meant the officially credited victories.

My question is : has the picture become clearer now many archives from countries Germany fought against are available?

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

richard dunn
Purpose or error?
Sun Sep 22 00:03:22 2002
68.49.8.115

Chris

Indeed an interesting subject. As far as I can detect the Germans were assiduous in trying to ascertain claims accurately. Their methods were often good but sometimes flawed (and human beings were involved) and results were uneven but generally reasonable. Final authority was outside the unit that could gain credit.

Few others have a record as good as the Germans. I have studied the Japanese in some depth and they generally did not require written reports from pilots. The unit CO summarized verbal reports and made "official" claims in a very subjective fashion. These were often passed up the chain with no official scrutiny and became the official version in the press or Radio Tokio.

In the SWPA early American pilot claims were frequently upgraded from "probable" to "sure" victories or claims for sure victories allowed when the official criteria was not met.

Elsewhere in this string someone has mentioned that the British were aware that their pilot's claims were inflated. There were propaganda reasons for allowing such claims to be publically announced. In the case of the Japanese some of their high level officers were quite aware of the exaggerated nature of their claims but nowhere have I found anyone objecting.

Late in the war the Americans with their gun cameras and generous resources were able to do a very creditable job of verifying claims. Until the last year of the war my impression is that the Germans did the best job.

Want an assessment of Clive Caldwell's actual victories in Australia? I have the book 3/4 written!

As I said, very interesting subject and worth a lengthy article or book in itself.

Rick

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Franek Grabowski
Touchy topic: inflated "kills"
Sun Sep 22 15:42:18 2002
213.25.54.73

Hello to all
Just some comments to the problems mentioned in the thread.
1. What's the victory? When the enemy pilot is killed, enemy a/c disintegrates, enemy a/c is written off or enemy a/c is damaged?
2. The rules of crediting a victory were different in almost every AF not to mention differencies over the period of time or between the units. Hence any claim to loss ratio must be misleading by the definition.
3. Number of missions flown is also misleading. Plenty of Polish pilots flying over the ETO in 1941-43 had a significant number of sorties flown but a very few engagements with the enemy. On the contrary, for most of the German pilots of the period a sortie was equal to an engagement.
4. During the periods of constant combats on more-less equal terms like Battle of Britain or Battle of Malta, the number of victories claimed by best pilots was similar for both sides. I understand overclaim ratio was similar too.
5. There's a small thing called tactics. Pilots had their objectives and orders and it's not uncommon to find accounts of RAF or VVS pilots claiming they had not to follow the enemy as they were either protecting own a/c or patrolling designated area. This always must put them in unfavourable position during the combat.
6. My research on the ETO combats suggest an claim to victory (dmage inflicted on the enemy) ratio in the 2-4 area. This is an universal figure that applies for both Allies and Germans. It gets higher during the mass aerial combats and lower when single combats occured. One must not forget about friendly fire incidents! Perhaps even every 5th a/c claimed by RAF was an own one.
7. Soviet archives are still not available for most of the researchers. However having in mind the above point, I find absolutely no reason to believe the the German claims on Eastern Front were any more reliable. Quite to the contrary, most of the combats were over the Soviet held territory, thus verification of claims was quite limited.
8. The purpose of a gun camera was not a confirmation of a kill but a verification of shooting abilities of a claimant. When the cine camera was introduced in the FC in 1941 it was found that many 'kills' were claimed out of the effective shooting range.
9. I haven't researched the 8AF claims in great depth but during the verification of Polish claims during the 1944/45 I've found that they overclaimed heavily.
Regards
Franek

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

CJE
A clearer picture
Sun Sep 22 20:23:16 2002
80.14.218.143

What I'm interested in is to match the victories officially credited on one side to the actual losses on the other.

It does not matter whether the e/a has been actually destroyed or not, how many missions the German pilots have flown, how many combats they engaged, or if they wore pink underpants. These are only side-aspects to my question.

What we have (or what we should have) is:
1) a score-board on the German side
2) a list of losses on the opposite side.
We all know that there are discrepancies, but to which extent nobody knows.

For about 40 years, we have been reading books about the Allied fighter pilot scores, without knowing what happened on the other side apart from propaganda statements. Nowadays we have books by Prien, Caldwell, Bergström et al, but however fascinating they may be, most of the time they only supply material from the German point of view.
Isn't it high time to reconcile German records with Allied records to have a broader view of the whole picture and say, yes Hartmann was credited with 352 "kills", but in fact he got 452 or 252?
That was the true meaning of my querry.

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

indianer
Claims vs. losses - Caldwell...
Mon Sep 23 17:29:15 2002
202.52.251.9

This is a trifle long...First off, I think that the point about matching *all* the claims of an ace with the verified losses of the opponents is extremely valid and should be undertaken.
Caldwell's "The JG 26 War Diary : Vol. II" (which I have) does seem to do this on numerous occasions, however. Some random examples picked up from the book :

21 April, 1945 : 1)(Dortenmann)the Focke Wulf pilots claimed three spitfires, without loss, but the Allied fighters involved cannot be traced ; none were lost.
2) (Schauder/Schramm)Each claimed a Tempest, probably from No.3 Squadron, which lost one.

25 February : Two Thunderbolts were claimed shot down in the initial bounce, by....
The P-47s belonged to the 36th FGs, 22nd Squadron, who..lost only one of their number.

9th March : The German pilots claimed the destruction of four P-47s...
(For the American formation, 366th FG, 391st FS)Their own losses amounted to two P-47s which crashed during combat ; one which made a forced landing on an advanced base; and two others which returned with major combat damage.

These combat narratives extend for the entire period of Jan 1943 to May 1945...however, they are definitely not summarised for each ace or pilot.each period's narratives (typically a few day's duration or even a day) is summarised by a table showing the Geschwader's claims and losses.
I feel the above book sets the standard for the manner and detailing of combat claims and losses for one unit....
It must be a herculean task to match the data at an ace-level day by day for all Jagdwaffe units with Allied losses . John Foreman's Fighter Command War Diaries (which I haven't read) , already published and in future, may give the details for the British day fighters...but does such information exist for American units ?

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Juha
Re: Touchy topic: inflated "kills"
Sun Sep 22 20:34:16 2002
62.237.17.227

Hello Franek
1.I interped victory as meaning enemy a/c shot down, so even if the enemy plane crashlanded and was later judged as repairable I think that the claim is valid. Have my oppinion any significance is an other question to which the answer is 'probably not'.
2. I agree but I also think that in the end the personality of the claimer also play a role. Some were able to evaluate their shooting more realistically than others.
4.I think that at least during the Malta battles some top aces were more realiable claimers than some others. But this opinion is based chiefly on the reading of Shores et al Malta books.
5.I agree and that is also valid to the LW pilots during the later part of the BoB.
7. I think that the German claims were more reliable in 1941-42 than in 1944-45.

Juha

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Laurent
Kills
Mon Sep 23 13:46:46 2002
195.6.104.32


1. Difficult definition of 'victory' : as for individual score, any plane forced down or shot down may be counted as a victory. But when speaking at strategic level, sum of victories by pilots should not be counted, only real losses count.
The same problem appeared in ground battles, especially for tanks and armoured vehicles. A crew or gun may claim 10-15 enemy vehicles destroyed in a battle and only have disabled most of them. If the gun's side wins the day, then most or all of this tanks will be lost by the other side, if the other side wins, all or most will be recovered and repaired.

Most the same in aerial battles : when you fight over your own territory, you can count the wrecks. When you fight behind enemy lines, you can't and most of the planes hit will land with some damage and be repaired. Also, most important is that most pilots that baled out will come back later to fight another day.

7. Problem is that the 44-45 German claims are not confirmed claims, as the confirmation system broke down and had no more time to treat them. Last real confirmed claims were in summer 1944 AFAIK.

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Juha
Re: Kills
Mon Sep 23 15:08:43 2002
62.236.238.91

Hello
1.I agree completely, I'm not personally very interesting in counting someone's kills and I think that it is usually impossible to get reliable and universaly accepted figure for someone's actual victories.
7. Yes, you are right but those late war claims are also counted to aces victorytotals. And why not, after all overclaiming was the norm in all airforces.

Juha

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Dénes Bernád
One case when victories & losses of both sides are known
Wed Sep 25 20:39:24 2002
204.101.53.233

During my researches - when I have tried, repeatedly, to match claims with losses, usually with little success - the only case when victories & losses of both sides are known is Autumn 1944, when Luftwaffe and Rumanian airplanes clashed over Transylvania, mainly in September.

I can unequivocally state that almost all Luftwaffe claims have a matching loss on the Rumanian side. Moreover, there are a few Rumanian combat losses that have no known Luftwaffe claims.
That's a convincing proof for me that Luftwaffe claims (at least of those units that were involved in that particular theatre of war), even that late in the war, were accurate.

Dénes

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Juha
Claims and true losses
Thu Sep 26 08:34:21 2002
62.236.236.197

Hello Dénes
thank you very much for interesting info. I have always thought that one way to test the validness of the claims is to go through some campaigns of limited duration and fought over limited area and were more or less complete loss info can still be found. Only way to keep the workload more or less reasonable, I think. But lot of archival work anyway. Great work! That's one of the reason why I have liked Shore's et al's Malta ja Balkan books.
I have always think that the JG 5 was something like worst case example in 1944. In 1941 German claims up north were rather accurate, and still in 1942 JG 5's claims against Soviets seemed to be c. double of that of the true losses but in 1944 JG 5 pilots were overclaiming very badly. I have tried to figure out why this happened and have given some of my assumptions in my earlier messages.

Juha

ps. I liked your Rumanian Air Force. The Prime Decade, 1938 - 1947.