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Originally Posted by majorfailure
And that was just what happened. Pilots claimed kills because they believed to have destroyed a vehicle. But if not for a spectacular kill like a ammo cook-off, it is not easy for pilots to assure a kill, a hit vehicle may stop because its engine is dead, or crew killed - or it might just stop to engage a target.
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Well, a tank under enemy fire that got it´s engine dead, is a dead tank, normally it's crew will bail out as fast as possible. Stranded tanks are canon ammo magnets
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Exactly. But this works the other way round too, e.g. many kills were claimed by pilots that were not sucessful. And also anything in camouflage is a tank, at least at 400 mph....
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For sure!, but maybe there is another kind of confusion here, pilots may report armoured vehicles, without distinguishing a tank from an armored transport. In german that's a normal confusion, since the term "Panzer" means armoured, but not necessarily a tank.
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Usually I'm sceptical, but Rudel was beyond human -and I don't mean that to be a compliment, and if such someone has a lot of luck, and quite some talent as a pilot he might as well get to such feats without cheating. He made a few thousand missions, and got shot down countless times, survived every time, if nothing else he is the luckiest WWII aviator ever.
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Lol! The guy ended the war as almost a Cyborg! And then he traveled to Argentina with Kurt Tank as a test pilot during Peron's time. He surelly was a bit on the crazy side.
But the fact that he survived the whole war flying a Stuka for most of the time, must mean a lot. Even if he didn't kill everything he claims, surviving all those missions make him someone to be appraised as a pilot.