German day fighter top aces by JG
 

Hello there gentlemen,

this is a compilaton of the German top day fighter aces by JG. I'm particularly intrested in the definite top aces of JG's 6, 11, 76, 300 and 301.

• JG1 Hans Ehlers
• JG2 Kurt Bühligen
• JG3 Joachim Kirschner
• JG4 Wilhelm Steinmann
• JG5 Heinrich Ehrler
• JG6 Fritz Stehle or a guy named Gerhard Lange
• JG7 Rudolf Rademacher
• JG11 Anton Hackl or Horst-Günther von Fassong
• JG26 Adolf Galland
• JG27 Hans-Joachim Marseille
• JG51 Anton Hafner
• JG52 Erich Hartmann
• JG53 Wolfgang Tonne
• JG54 Otto Kittel
• JG76 Roloff von Aspern,Ernst Düllberg,Hans Philipp and Maximilian Stotz
• JG77 Ernst-Wilhelm Reinert
• JG300 Konrad Bauer or Peter Jenne or Rudi Zwesken
• JG301 Kurt Welter or Anton Benning or Walter Loos
• JG302 Heinrich Wurzer

Cheers,

Michael

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

Hi Michael

Not sure about JG 2 as Bühligen included u/c in his total of 112, he had at least 99 confirmed, maximum of 105 confirmed. Mayer had 102 confirmed.

JG 7 =Stehle with 4
JG 11 = Hans-Heinrich Koenig with 24, Hackl 22+(likely leader)
JG 76 Von Aspern with 8
JG 300 Bauer, Zwesken and Bretschneider each with 21
JG 301 Kurt Welter with 17

Then we have training units. I think that these would attack heavy bombers if they came their way?

JGr.Ost Karlheinz Cordes with 2
JGr.west Hermann Hintzen and Schmid each with 2
JGr.Sud Horst Rippert and Rainer Müller-Haagen with 6 each.
JG 104 Eberhard Bock with 3

Other oddities:-

Kdo.262 Helmut Baudach and Alfred Schreiber with 2 each
Kdo.Nowotny Franz Schall with 5
JG 400 Siegfried Schubert with 3
Kdo.Hermann(at night) Friedrich-Karl Müller, Horst John and Kurt Roder with 3 each.
EGJ 2 Oskar-Heinz Bär
JG 200 Eduard Isken with 7
ZKG30 Peter Laufs with 4(presume twin engine fighters, day)
LG 2 Herbert Ihlefeld with 56
Jv44 Adolf Galland with 6
JG 50 Hermann Graf and Walter Grislawski each with 2.

I agree with you other listings. Joachim Müncheberg with 82 just misses out with Galland on 83 with JG 26.


Kind Regards

Johannes

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

Michael,

I would put eg. Lipfert in JG 52 and delete Hartmann. Lipfert had far more victories than Hartmann. He could have max. 100-130, as his 352 was b.llsh.t...

Gabor

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

more than 1/2 of Welter's W.S. claims are in 5./JG 302

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

Hi Guys

Relegating Hartmann really only opens a can of worms. Also I don't doubt Lipfert's honesty, but what about Barkhorn and Rall? Do we also relegate Kirschner from the JG 3 top place, and how would you work out the top JG 2 and JG 5 places?

Kind Regards

Johannes

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

Having the opportunity to review the REAL soviet losses from TsAMO (Podolsk, Russia) sources of the 5 & 17 VA in 1944-45, it was a shocking experience to compare them to Axis claims. For Hartmann, approx. only every 3rd claim had a POTENTIAL match in the soviet records, while for eg. Lipfert, there were nearly perfect matches for 90% of his claims. Would be nice to see other fronts as well, but they are not part of my research. Hope one day others will fill this hole and clarify the rest. I am sure Hartmann did not have more than 150 real victories and it is about time to correct his gigantic lie/legend in aviation history.

In historical research there is no place for outdated political propaganda & fairy tales.

Gabor

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

I quite agree and I think that the word "confirmed" is misleading if the word the Luftwaffe used was "anerkannt" (accepted/recognised) rather than "bestätigt" (confirmed). I think that maybe we should reserve "confirmed" for the cases where we can confidently match a claim to a loss.

Just about everyone overclaimed — usually in good faith and for completely understandable reasons — so comparing pilots' total claims doesn't get us very far in studying history. Even if we knew the true totals of aircraft each shot down, it would still tell us little without considering how many months/years a pilot spent in combat, how many sorties he flew and how many potential targets were available in the sectors where he served.

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

Hello Johannes,

thanks for your elaborate and intresting post !

To the others: this thread is not about the veracity of accepted claims. That issue really should be discussed in a separate thread.

Michael

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

NOT about the veracity? Then what is the whole purpose of it? Sorting fairy tales all over again?

Sorry, I thought this is a historical forum...

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

So is it about comparing totals of events that may not even have happened? How is that useful?

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

...separate thread !

M

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

Possibly, but how answering my question?

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

*sigh*
If you insist.
On the one hand: scores and scores of extremely good books and articles written by the greatest airwar experts in mankind's history.
On the other hand: a person named Nick Beale.

Whom would you give your attention ?

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

OK, so you've tried awfully hard to construct a withering put-down but you still haven't answered my question. What do you believe to be the value of comparing totals of events which may or may not have taken place?

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

Excuse me? First I really thought that this is just a joke.
What is your problem with Nick's question? Do you really think that because some data was commonly used, copied and automatically repeated by many researchers in the past, using only one sided (German) information (namely the reported claims) without knowing anything about the verified losses of the other side, it makes their story true?

Please stop ridiculing yourself and be a little bit more realistic. Please, ask your 'world famous historians': based on what INFORMATION they published and repeated in the past eg. Hartmann's 352 'victories'? Please ask them to list the verified aircraft serial numbers and pilots of Hartmann's soviet victims! Your whole argument is pathetic and not worthy for a historical forum.

For me: in one hand there are black & white Allied and Soviet loss reports and war diaries -without missing any pages- (with specific AC serial numbers, pilot names, dates, units), while on the other hand there is Michael who wants to live in a wonderland and still believes in outdated fairy tales. Sorry, but here it is not too difficult to choose...

Gabor

PS: If Hartmann's and other's claims were all true, then Germany would have won WWII.

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

The war was won/lost on the earth not in the air ... even if Hartmann's and other's claims were all true ...

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

Correct. But you get the point.

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

Jumping briefly on this topic which I found quite boring (my 2 cents) but your comment, Knusel, is felt unrespectful toward a dedicated researcher and writer who takes time to answer your silly questions and shares - freely - his knowledge on the internet (we don't need to buy his books, just joking now)
What do you have written and published yet?

Sorry, but some forumer may be more humble and think 7th time before writting.

Bye

ClinA-78

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

Hi HGabor

I think what Michael is looking for are the claims of the individual. Whether or not the pilot is honest. Even an honest pilot will have thought to have destroyed an aircraft that crawls back to base. A fraudulent pilot might officially claim an aircraft that not only he didn't shoot-down, or attack, or even seen, but officially it's confirmed. No matter how bad it sounds, it's still official. Several Luftwaffe pilots submitted no claims for planes they shot-down for many reasons varying from didn't think they had to couldn't be bothered with the paper work.

Regards

Johannes

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

Nick,
Thank you very much, much appreciated!
Gabor

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

As I mentioned, I don't think this thread or even the forum in general is the right setting to downgrade Hartmann's score.
Even the Khazanov project though being a diligent attempt, was flawed from the very onset and full of methodical errors, that's why it was chastised so much.
The matter requires a personal meeting of the most renowned specialists that results in a publication based on consensus.
I'm just an aviation fan, a non-professional, but in my profession, recently the prostate carcinoma classfication was refaced this way and now it is accepted by virtually everyone.
Some of your posts mix up opinions with facts, others are full of emotions which decreases their persuasive power.
That's why I prefer to keep on attributing the 352 to Hartmann, knowing very well that he overclaimed more or less than all the other thousands of aces in every nation in every war.

M

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

Hi Guys

Regarding Hartmann

I think he was an opportunist. His claims to begin with seem fine, then explode in volumn(though he was flying huge numbers of sorties) You can't overclaim without help, and it would appear that certain Staffel were prone to this the 7th and 9th with JG 52, the 6th staffel with JG 5 e.t.c Only 90% of his claims can be checked against anyway as those for 1945 are largely guestimates anyway. You can say that a leopard doesn't change his spots, but I have noticed that many overclaimers fizzle out.....probably because they have fallen in the company of honest guys, usually because they have been transferred. I believe that in the West crash-sites were more usually investigated, so unless your combats are usually over the sea, then there is much higher chance that a claim may not be comfirmed.
Let us not forget that the British and American's overclaimed, especially bomber gunners, for B-17's at one point 20 claims for every lose, though that doesn't make them dis-honest i.e twenty gunners might be firing at a fighter that goes down......they all claim honestly!

Not many an author will say that on such a date such a pilot shot down five Il-2's, but the Sowiets lost none. Apart from JG 5 the Russian fronts units areas did over-lap from time to time making exact claim/lose details hard to put an actual name to.

In fact naming actual fraudsters for an author with only invite fights, it's kind of tabo. Personally I have just got around this by mentioning that a pilots claims match Allied losses well, or he was a honest claimer. But I am a little sad that my childhood heros were only inflating the cost of a Ritterkreuz......there are many a pilot who deserved the Ritterkreuz, but didn't get it because he lacked numbers, numbers that would have brought huge awards from any other Airforce.

Also the Luftwaffe claiming system when American heavies were involved basically gives two claims for every bomber lost ......like Schweinfurt Luftwaffe claims 120 the American's loose sixty. Usually only Luftwaffe aces in the West can be 100% accurately investigated, if honest I would assume they continued this if they went to Russia....but who can accurately say? I would say that an easy honest pilot to check here would be Joachim Müncheberg, so let us investigate him.......instead of arguing.

Kind regards

Johannes

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

Good morning Johannes,

thanks for your intresting considerations.
Could it contribute to the avoidance of misunderstandings to define terminology more clearly ?
"Confirmed" means in nearly every publication: "approved by the administrative authorities of the ace". It might be wise to use it only in this context.
The other thing is "correlated to an enemy loss" which should receive a separate terminus. However, I'm a non-mothertongue-speaker, and so far don't have a better suggestion than "verified".

Have a nice Wednesday,

Michael

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

Yes.

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

Hmm, using cynisms and needing "help" when discussing with a totally harmless German raises my sympathy.
Don't be so bitter !
Airwar enthusiasm is just a hobby ! It's fun !

M

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

To me, shining the once given glory of an opportunist pilot (namely Hartmann) who:

- did not take the opportunity to clarify the truth after the war (if - let's say- once it was only the propaganda-pressure of the Luftwaffe or his unit on him he ~had to accept),
- whose only every 3rd, or 4th claim can be verified from the records of the opposite side, as a much worse statistics than most fighter aces' of WWII,

- so to me rather THIS seems to be emotional, having nothing in common with an objective, historical approach that is ultimately the main goal of this forum.

Gabor

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

IMHO I’d not like to speak honesty/dishonesty even if there are cases of fraudulent claimers. Just because it much easier to dig out real world facts than figure out someone's motives. I think it simply the question that some can appraise the results of their actions more objectively than others. And then there is the effect of used tactic, Hartmann preferred hit and run tactic and as in the case of the Flying Tigers, this easily produced overclaims. Lipfert, who seems to be exceptionally objective claimer, was more diverse in tactics he used and didn’t shun close in dogfights. He also seems to be above average in a/c recognition, which made it easier to verify his claims.



Juha

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

There is a saying among German physicians which translates roughly:
"Once something is printed it is cast in stone - if you want to remove it from the stone get something in print that's better!"

I do not claim that Hartmann has shot down 352 planes, I'm even quite sure he didn't.
What's most puzzling to me is that some guys present their personal views as if they were given facts more valid than anything that has ever been written. These guys get aggressive when the audience doesn't cheer and doesn't discredit the greatest aviation authors. That's just too over-selfconfident to be credible to a normal guy like me.

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

That's fair, but whatever was discussed here in this thread was already discussed (with detailed data) at least over 2 years ago, so these were absolutely not just 'words in the air'. Not to mention, that nobody said here that we do not accept Hartmann's claims because it is not matching our personal opinion, or taste, but because it is not matching the original documents of the opposite side - and that is a big difference!

Gabor

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

Hello Gabor,

yes, this thread wasn't the right location for a discussion that has been discussed already.
How do you like my proposal of sharply separating the terms
confirmed kill vs verified kill ?
It might avoid needless misunderstandings.

Cheers,

Michael

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

Hi Michael,

We all know that Hartmann was credited 352 (confirmed) victories. To me the question is: how many of these were true or false. To decide it, I go to the other side(s) reports, so to me it is even more simple: YES -or- NO. So far for the checked items there is much more NO, than YES.

Gabor

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

Hello Gabor,

crosschecking claims is a very important and fascinating subtopic of airwar enthusiasm.
However, it's not among my favourite 10 subtopics.
Most of all I'm intrested in finding out what plane an ace flew when scoring a corfirmed, (not necessarily a verified) kill. In some cases this hasn't been documented but I also enjoy finding out the most probable plane. In Hartmann's case it's easy: Bf109G and K only. I also determined the most probable plane for all German WW1 ace kills.

What is your favourite topic ? Crosschecking ?

Michael

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

Hi Michael,

My favourite topic is the history of the aerial war over Hungary during WWII, especially the 1944-1945 events. As a volunteer researcher of the Szolnok Aircraft Museum, I have the list of the soviet plane losses in Hungary from TsAMO archives, Podolsk, Russia via our Russian partners and friends. Only this unique situation made it possible to compare the Axis claims to the (real) soviet losses in certain months (and fronts). This applies to Hartmann - and everybody else for their dogfights over Hungary. From here I know, that eg. Lipfert was an extremely accurate and honest pilot.

Gabor

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

According to the oxford dictionary a synonym of verified is confirmed... So the distinction being suggested in this thread is IMHO not correct to do.

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

Yeah but consider the Latin origin:
confirmed = "made permanent", e.g. approve a claim officially
verified = "made true", e.g. match to enemy loss

M

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

The best post in the entire thread

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

In fact, I don' t care about Aces, Experten or else but someone here appears from nowhere and challenges acknowledged researchers, at the same time, he provides few inputs as his own material (or archives?) is based on already published book. Meanwhile, others researchers spend their time on this thread for what??? It is so consuming time and energy. As especially there are still so much uncovered in the Luftwaffe (I was thinking about Larry De Zeng's recent post) than aces & Co, even if they deserved attention.
I am laughing when those said researchers (compilators of second row) lit the fire and let the inferno behind them.

Last bye for this post.

ClinA-78

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

...cool down !
You talk about airwar enthusiasm as if it were airwar !

Have a nice weekend,

Michael, who never claimed to be a researcher and who is happy to stay a compilator

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

Since you aren't a researcher and have contributed no original information to the discussions you have started, you should show more respect for people who actually do research. When they disagree with what you read in a book, they may well have good reasons. If you can't understand that then you are going to annoy people.

Re: German day fighter top aces by JG
 

Thank you, Hofstetter.

Nick,

it would be easier to take the info spread by a researcher serious if is wasn't presented in such an annoying narcistic attitude.
In the profession in which I do research (pathology), no one would ever DEMAND respect over and over again. We publish and let our publications speak for themselves. I have already received some of your posts which you find so brilliant. However they do not contain a single useful information for me (yet). Instead they contain much nagging, which annoys me. I'm sorry to say that again but whom I give my admiration is my own free will as I'm unwilling and unable to feign.

M