Originally Posted by Brain Potter
In the RAF keeping a personal tally was officially frowned upon and also regarded as "bad form" by sqn colleagues. I guess this accounts for very little publicity such as painting of multple killl markings on aircraft. The whole thing was regarded as a team effort and a kill had to be independently confirmed to receive a credit.
Evidence would suggest that's not quite true. Plenty of photo evidence of 'kill' markings on RAF fighters during the Battle. However, it is correct to say that 'officialdom' didn't seek out and praise individual pilots for propaganda purposes, and by and large apart from one or two names, the general public where largely ignorant of who was leading scorer or whatever.
Originally Posted by Brain Potter
Conversely, the Luftwaffe Aces were given huge official backing and the whole wing (geschwader?) was set up so that the likes of Molders, Galland and Wick could add to their personal score.
It's certainley true that the Reich propaganda machine went into overdrive and 'fuelled' the scoring race between Galland and co, with the Experten feited like todays football 'stars' with the issue of personally signed photocards being produced etc.
However, it wrong to say the whole Geschwaders was set-up for one individual, rather individual squadrons within the Geschwader, which is why you will seen an even split with a 4 or 5 high scoring senior pilots from each Geschwader. There was still a good number of Luftwaffe NCO pilots that scored well during the Battle, such as Werner Machold and Heinz Bar.
Originally Posted by Brain Potter
It seems that there was a much less rigourous requirement to confirm claims.
That myth has been proved to be untrue numerous times, in fact in many ways, the Luftwaffe requirement exceeded that of the Allies.