Kills Claims Procedure

When a pilot scores an aerial victory they should ideally have had it witnessed by another member of the group who will act as confirmation of the kill.

When tallying kill caims, witnesses and end of mission status during the missino debrief if a pilot puts forward a claim the pilot who witnessed the claim should state something along the lines of:

"I witnessed PILOT A shoot down a single engined British fighter" if possible they also add details such as " spitfire with markings RS-D"

However this is on occasions not possible for various reasons such as adverse weather, overwhelming enemy numbers or the severity of the combat situation.

Equally when claiming kills pilots will need to state the aircraft type: at a minimum this would be say if it was a single engine fighter / twin engine heavy fighter / twin engine bomber / four engine bomber and nationality of aircraft ie. British / French / Polish etc.

If a kill is not witnessed it will be counted as unconfirmed (not giving the pilot any points or add to their tallies). Historically we would have the backup option of having our kills witnessed by friendly troops on the ground.

As such each mission will have upto 10 stationary cameras situated roughly along the front lines, if your kill can be seen by one of those stationary cameras then you can take a screenshot and have it confirmed by ground troops, if not then the ground personel couldn't see it and therefore can't act as your ground based witness.
This needs to be done within 48 hours of the mission report being posted or else the kill status as unconfirmed remains permanent to prevent us having to go and trawl through too many mission reports.

If you scored more than one kill in the mission where you are using a ground camera as a witness YOU MUST post images of all your kills, not just the unwitessed one so confirmation of all kills can be made.

Preferably all kills will be confirmed in missions and then backed up in the reports with screenshots however we do all understand the time needed to do these isn't always possible, as such it will be those that need confirming must be posted to be confirmed, others that have been confirmed should be posted if at all possible.

If you can state the exact type of aircraft shot down the better as we hope to be able to collate information and provide a report each virtual month to demonstrate the impact we are having on the war.

"Shared" kills are not possible in the Luftwaffe. If there is a dispute the pilots must resolve the issue by themselves, if unable to do so then they must speak with their schwarmfuhrer or staffelkapitain to resolve the issue, if no resolution can be found neither pilot gets the claim and instead it goes down as a Staffel kill.

Knowingly making false kill claims will not be tolerated and can incur penalties of various severity.

Experten Status

In JG53, only members that have attained the status of "Experten" are permitted to use a custom aircraft skin. To qualify as an "Experten" you have to destroy 25 confirmed aerial victories without being killed or captured.

Or alternatively, when your overall aerial kill total reaches 50. In the meantime you will only be permitted to add either your name below the cockpit (In small tasteful lettering) or a name for your aircraft on the nose. Kill markings on the rudder will also be permitted but should be removed if/when you are killed or captured. Certain "landmark" numbers are permitted to stay after death with permission from your StaffelKapitan or a member of Gruppe Stab.

The use of custom skins will be limited to only those that "look" authentic and that "could" have operated on the frontlines.

Personal icons, or bright fluro colors etc will not be permitted. As an example: Homer Simpson cartoons did not exist during the war so using a Homer graphic would be unacceptable. Also all custom skins should display the color coded numbers assigned to their staffel. eg White for 4./JG53, Red for 5./JG53, and Yellow for 6./JG53. Finally any custom skin must be approved by a member of the Gruppestab before they are used in any JG53 campaign missions. We have some very talented skinners in the group, if you require a skin to be made then im sure one of our skinners will be more then happy to sort something out for you.

If you gain this honor by becoming an Experten, then tragedy strikes and you are killed. Don't worry; your personal paint scheme is safe! You get to keep using it, in recognition that being an experten is a very impressive feat!!