It has been very common for all the forces to exagerate losses of their enemies.
In case of the ships AA fire - as on the Allies side - it seemed to be underestimated rather than opposite.
The ships reports give figures of an a/c shot down when it was observed splashing the sea. Smoking aircraft are said to be "probables" or damaged.
As we know from the RAF operations many damaged a/c never reached their home bases their damages forced the crew to abandon them or crashed after attempts to keep them flyable. So no surprise that a smoking Ju88 finally fell down to sea out of sight of the ships.
In case of the AA defense in operation Harpoon the number of the Axis a/c shot down as compiled from the German and Italian archives by researchers seems to be much more painful for them than expected.
The figures provided by the a/m researches shows that in just 48 hours of the Axis airstrikes on the convoy they lost 27 aircraft.
By types they were 6 SM79; 8 SM84; 5 Ju88; 3 Ju 87R; 3 CR42; 2 MC 200.
The overall missions (aircraft tasked) number was 275 which means 10% of the engaged forces were destroyed by the defense.
Adding similar number of the a/c being damaged, many construction total loss it was not an easy flying for the Axis crews.
The historical material compiled from the articles of Italian historians presented in the "Storia Militare" magazine and other; published in Polish in the MSO naval hisory magazine no 9/2012, authors A.Bartelski, W. Budzillo.
gd
Operation Harpoon. Axis aircraft loses
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