Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

Today I flicked through the latest issue of Le Fana de l'Aviation (Febr. 2005).
The feature article, titled: 'Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?', written by a Russian researcher, Dmitry Khazanov, deals with the air victory claims of the top fighter ace of all times.
I did not have a chance to read much of the article, but based on the title, the Russian writer doubts the veradicity of most of Hartmann's victory claims.

I would like to hear from someone, who has read the article and the conclusion drawn by the author.

Dénes

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

I am very interesting in this article, feel so sorry that I could not read Russian, my opnion is that every fighter pilots overclaimed, Hartmann was no exception, if we accept the reseanable 2:1 overcliamed rate, the real Hartmann's "kills" would be 180-200, that would not surprised me, but 80 ? that was unbelieveble, that was almost equal to claim that Hartmann was a deliberatly liar, dose Mr Khazanov have any reall evidence to support his claim ? Or is this article just another propaganda ? What is Mr Khazanov's reputation in the historay research area ?

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

Since Dénes is describing this article as a feature in Le Fana de l'Aviation it would suffice if you read french!

:D

No, do not read French either, I only read Chinese and English, and I believe this article was first published in Russian, I heard someone mentioned it before.

It never published in russian
 

Hi
As I know, it never published in russian. However I can ask russian text from author.
Dmitriy

Hartmann
 

I haven't read the article myself...however Hans Ring has compiled a lengthy 5-page reply rebutting most of the arguments ('facts') presented therein...the piece is awaiting translation before hopefully appearing in a future issue..

FalkeEins and karlenko, very interesting, would one of you genttlemen be nice enough to give us some at least brief information about Mr Khazanov's and Mr Ring's rebuke ? I would be very appreciated

Hartmann's air victories
 

The basic question is that is there a complete, final list with all of Hartmann's 352 victory claims? AFAIK, only the first 150 vics., as written in his first logbook, are known 100%, as his second logbook was stolen when he surrendered in 1945.

Recently, the French aviation magazine, Avions, published a long article on him, incl. a reconstruction of his victory claims. The second part of his claims list was spotty, at the best (and did not overlap with the info published by Tony Wood).

Dénes

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

Mr. Khazanov has published several books and articles related to the air war on the Eastern Front.

I have heard that his works are generally well researched. However, I did not read any of his books, as I don't know Russian.
Opinions?

Dénes

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

Fair enough, Denes, please kind enough to give us more details when you have a chance to finish this article.

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

I would like to chime in and suggest there is another source for cross checking claims data: at least one of the JG 52 volumes put out by Niko Fast some years ago has tabulated claims and losses. As these volumes are compilations of articles by the veterans of JG 52, it could be useful. Unfortunately these books are rarer than hen's teeth. I have volumes 1-4( but they are in storage a thousand miles away!) and a total of 7 were published by Bernsberger.
I don't know if this helps any but I thought I should mention it.

Good Luck, and good hunting!

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

for those interested I've translated some paragraphs from the Khazanov article and added some translated general comments on the article from Jean-Yves Lorant and Hans Ring..access my site via the link below..."visit..homepage"..

cheers,

Neil

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

Neil..........there was no link in your posting

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

..John,

the link is in blue ..under my name...bottom left..automatically appears under each post.. or perhaps your screen is configured in such a way that you can't see it..?

Neil

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

When clicking your blue, underline name and after being directed to your home page: http://www.members.aol.com/falkeeins/Sturmgruppen
I receive the message that the URL cannot be found.

It would be better if you could just post the link to the page directly in your post.

Dénes

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

..links appear to be working properly...but try this link direct to the page

http://members.aol.com/falkeeins/Stu...annclaims.html

Neil

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

Arguments contra E & F really knocked me down.

Re: site
 

Neil:

For some reason I had never seen your site. It is very well done. My congratulations on some good work in getting these translations up. They are very useful.

Thanks!

John

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

Thank you for posting these translated excerpts (as far this article wasn't issued in Russian ever), but certainly I'm not impressed by critics.

All contras presented by these respectable researchers regards to Hartmann's claims. Details from a German point of view, again. And they gave no comments from Soviet side.

Obviously they couldn't, as far their experience in Soviet documents research is poor, I think.

In this light the words "a) the disparate & incomplete nature of the Soviet archives precludes any objective analysis - who shot down who, a "dangerously romanticised" version of the air war. " looks strange at least.

Soviet documents are rather complete and detailed. Those I dealed with are more informative than German ones I saw in Western publications, at least.

Both sides made overclaims - it's just a matter of fact that we, historians, should cope with calmly. As for German overclaims, me and Russian researchers I know who researched German claims in particular operations, combats etc. have an overall impression that German overclaiming rate was about 2-3 times. Of course it depended much on pilot personality, war period and other factors.

Best regards,

Andrey Dikov

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

FalkeEin, it looks like your link contains majorly the comments from Mr Ring, where is the original article of Khazanov ?

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

Denes suggests a ratio of 2:1 for claims to kills: I believe that Chris Shores, with all his experience, has said the same. I would point out however, that this ratio is not an overall factor. In times of intense fighting this can rise dramatically, and 3:1 is certainly not unreasonable, having been seen in many occaisons. Using this might suggest a total of some 120 for Hartmann, but even if we assume that 80 is a "correct" figure, so what? Similar factors would apply to almost everyone on the Eastern front, and indeed elsewhere.

Only 80. Wow, what a poor result. No?

From what has been seen elsewhere when both sides records have been compared, I fully expect many of these Luftwaffe totals to reduce significantly. As will Soviet totals. As will Japanese and USN Pacific totals. As have RAF, USAAF and Luftwaffe totals where comparisons have been possible. I don't believe that it diminishes the individuals concerned.

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

DefiniteLY Khazanov article doesn't have enough strong points to prove that most Hartmann's victories are overclaims. Obviously it would be a subject for a big book not a small article.

It's also clear that some sentenses of Khazanov critics look naive and obsessively.

Seems that cold war propaganda still keeps some minds. The remark about russian archives -"a) the disparate & incomplete nature of the Soviet archives precludes any objective analysis - who shot down who, a "dangerously romanticised" version of the air war " doesn't look just "strange at least" - as Andrei Dikov mentioned - in reality it looks ignorant, arrogant and represents the remark's author as an absolute neophyte.

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

John,

thanks for your kind comments..the Khazanov article struck me as being fairly sobre, if somewhat lacking in detail..it's also quite a long piece, so I shall keep adding to that page..

Graham,

Khazanov states that Hartmann's victory total is "..somewhere between 70 to 80 Soviet aircraft shot down" He continues... "It is therefore not incorrect to state that the scores of other famous JG 52 aces are likely to have been largely superior to Hartmann's, given that the evidence for his victory claims is much more unreliable than that for other pilots such as Barkhorn and Rall (..) This has much to do with Hartmann's tactic of catching lone Soviet aircraft unawares far behind the front lines, with only a wing man's statement to support his claim and goes someway to explaining the disparity with Soviet records since aircraft lost in this way were recorded as missing in action and not as shot down in combat..."

Mazila,

'cold war propaganda'. Researchers in the West have no idea what may have 'happened' to the Soviet archives during the cold war period....Was it not the case for example that Hartmann was put on trial in 1949 by the KGB charged with the destruction of 345 Soviet aircraft..as Khazanov states .." Hartmann's defenders will always argue that the KGB's researchers are unlikely to have been in error given the seriousness of the charges.."




Neil

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

C) "On 29 May 1944 Hartmann claimed three La-5s shot down in the vicinity of the airfield of Roman (Rumania) during a large scale attack by aircraft of the 5th Air Army. All the La-5s of the 302nd Fighter Division returned safely" . False. Hartmann claimed a single Airacobra near Jassy. In addition Hartmann's victories 248-250 claimed on 4 June 1944 were P-39s and not Il-2s

??? According to Tolliver/Constable:
29.5.44 - 3 LaGG-7! (1 Aircobra is stated at the Claimlists...)
4.6.44 - 4 Jak-9 and 3 Il-2; Kill 244 - 250! ( 6 Aircobras and 1 LaGG at the Claimlists)

So for me it's clear that searching claims by type isn't valid enough. There is no reason why germans everytime identified right type of a/c.

Most authors forgot, that Hartmann didn't need eyewitnesses, since it wasn't necessary since July 43 for getting a kill! And so it comes that Rall fights a claim of Hartmann, is described in Tolliver/Constable. Rall states indirectly, that Hartmann is not telling the truth.
Questionable is also, that Hartmanns get his 200th and 300th kills at day where he made over ten kills a day. These days are his best, seems there wishes had to come true. Also there is no long checking procedure for these kills, since Göring sends congratulations for KC and kills same day. ;)

I wonder about Seidel statements of 25.000 fighters shot down, since USSR lost only 20.700 for all reasons in combat. Also I am wondering about the german claims, that climbs in 1943 up to 11-13k, although there are much less fighters at the eastern front, pilots were getting worser and technical supremacy was lost.

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

Do you really think that KGB did care about seriousness of the charges? It's funny to imagine NKVD people trying to prove these 345 victories :)

The only way to find out the real picture is making a good research in Tsamo(Podolsk Archive Of Ministry Of Defence) where all VVS documents are stored.

the problem is that Hartmann's claims data is not comprehensive in terms of dates, plane types etc.

Probably it could be check statistically (with claims which are able to be checked) that would give us an overall impression

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

good idea!

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

My two cents. I read the article last month and write of memory.

I think both number of 352 and 80 are ridiculous. Most of the times overclaiming is 25-40% so Hartmann probably shot down 200-250 aircraft.
The original article uses all the revisionist tricks. Basically pick some precise cases to show that the "usual story" is wrong, and then using these as a proof that all cases are wrong. In the article, the author gives some examples, uses them to justify the fact that Hartmann only shot down less than 1/4 of his claims and in another "generalization" (don't remember if it is implicit or openly written) doubts the veracity of the German fighters in general.
In this case, the author seems to have choosen the wrong examples or to have quoten bad sources (another usual aspect of revisionism, that usually shows outdated wrong sources, so proving them wrong is easier.... and obviously not saying that every serious historian knows these sources are wrong).

While reading the article, I was thinking (as I always did with "revisionism"): what is the goal of this ? You will notice that putting the score of Hartmann at 80 is telling the best German ace "really" scored less victories than the best Soviet ace, who scored more than 80 victories. This is absolutely not written in the article and only my personnal interpretation.
The "who shot down who" question is most often a very difficult one and often misleading... A part of the "solved" cases compared partial list of losses with partial list of claims. A more interesting question is to try to compare global victories to global losses, when possible for each battle (a battle that may last hours and expand on hundred of kilometers in the case of the big Allied raids over Germany).

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

Laurent,the top Sovie ace's score were 62 kills

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

You know, friends, Khazanov's work is undoubtedly weak... But the 'reply' of his opponents Jean-Yves Lorant and Hans Ring - is more, more weaker! :D That place: "the disparate & incomplete nature of the Soviet archives precludes any objective analysis - who shot down who" - is so stupid that after them all other words are in vain... Had worked those men in "Soviet atchives" just one day?..

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

MB, MB is an excellent researcher, although a little old school, so please show a little respect to him. The thing really concern me is that we have not read the full text of Mr Khazanov's article, only thing we read are piece of text from here and there, and Mr Ring's comment, not the whole picture, so how could we make a judgement by ourself only base on those ?

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

The NKWD Argument to proove the kills is a little bit ridicioulus, in my opinion.

NKWD accused Hartmann also for destroying a bred fabrication site, which were at JG-54 sector situated, killing 780 civilians due powerless bullets and for destroying 346 russian airplanes.

So Hartmann really killed so much civilians? ;)

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

Jens:

I seriously doubt Hartmann destroyed a bread plant or killed any civilians; given an Me 109 is a very short ranged fighter I doubt he could have gone too far behind the lines & I don't think a bread plant would be too close to the front---as I recall from the Hartmann bio, the charges stated that when he fired at Soviet aricraft, not all of the ammo he fired struck an aircraft; the ammo fell to the ground after they 'ran out of ballistic momentum' & killed civilians who just happened to be on the ground where the bullets/shells hit;


NickM

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

Yes, sorry. My memory was faulty (I had 82-83 kills in mind).

I was just wondering why the author gave the number of 80.

The French article is not giving enough data to justify this number. And as I said before the general writing of the article was similar to revisionism. But I have not read the original article (and can't).

AFAIK, what we can do now to compare the claims of a WW2 pilot to real losses is to divide the claims into 3 categories:
1) victim identified
2) target identified but escaped
3) unidentified target, most of the cases falling in this category as most claims were in big battles and overclaiming is common there

First category should count as 1 kill, second as 0, third should be counted as 'shared' (let's say we know German pilots claimed 12 kills and shot down 6 planes really, each kill will give 0,5 points for each kill).

So we will have a probable score number.

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

I would be interested to know how he arrived at '2:1' as an average for inflated pilot claims.

July 10th, 1940 is usually regarded as the first day of the Battle of Britain. Stephen Bungay, author of The Most Dangerous Enemy, said that German pilots claimed to have shot down 30 RAF day fighters. (Another source, Tony Wood's Web site, lists 21 Spitfires and 6 Hurricanes claimed). But only one British fighter was destroyed in those combats: Hurricane P3671 crashed after a mid-air collision with a German Do 17.

In addition, RAF Bomber Command launched six Blenheims for a low level attack on Amiens airfield. German pilots claimed seven destroyed, but only five were lost. Bungay seems to have implied that all five Blenheims were downed by German flak units, which opened fire before the Bf 109s arrived. Unfortunately I don't have a copy of the 107 Squadron history, so I cannot cross-check that.

I have nothing against Erich Hartmann, but so far I have not seen anyone offer hard evidence that he destroyed 40 enemy planes, let alone 80.

Hartmann must have been a very shrewd pilot because he managed to survive several years of combat, but 352 kills is undoubtedly a fantasy. I would challenge his pundits to prove otherwise.

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

One question - were all 352 victories of Hartmann veryfied by Abschusskommission??? Being a commander of unit Hartmann was veryfing all his own kills by himself - at the levell of his unit.... But there was also the higher level. Could someone explain it closer???

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

according to the RAF homepage:
on july 10th. not just 1 hurri was lost.
2 hurricanes are lost in combat, and 2 crashed while landing.

six nifty,
you know , how many missions were flown by hartmann ?
if you take robert johnsons missions ( 28 kills in 91 missions ) to compare it with hartmanns.
his claims are also undoubtedly fantasy.


note.
i also believe most claims , not just from hartmann or the luftwaffe ( all airforces) has nothing to do with the reality.
its just a matter of the ratio of overclaims.
1 : 3 or 1: 4 for the VVS and the LW, even worse for the USAAF and the RAF.

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

That's too strict borders IMO. Last our researches in Russia give us the ratio from 1:2 to 1:5...6 for the LW, from 1:1 to 1:2...3 for the IA PVO and the worst is for the VVS KA - from 1:3...4 to 1:10 and even higher in some ocasions... Think the same (last) is for USAAF and RAF fighnets over Europe in 1943-45.

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

of course , MB.

the overclaims were sometimes better and sometimes worse .
this is why i believe the overclaims 1:3 / 1:4 is not too far from reality ,for the whole war.;)

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

Khazanov gives no indication of how or why he arrives at a victory total of " 70 to 80 "..the article is simply not detailed enough..he presents evidence from Soviet archives for only a handful of dates..see Hans Ring's response on my site..

Khazanov bases the 'factual' content of his piece on the Toliver/Constable book...which automatically discredits him in the eyes of the serious historians....

Khazanov and Ring appear to agree on the total of victories for which there exists evidence of official confirmation on the German side..some 289 recorded up to 27 August 1944..

Most of Khazanov's article is character assassination at best.."Hartmann never enjoyed the reputation among his comtempories accorded Moelders or Galland...he never enjoyed elevated rank in the Bundesluftwaffe..."

Re: Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?
 

You're comparing apples and oranges.

My sources show that ten RAF fighters were 'lost' as a result of combat-- but nine of those planes managed to land safely and were listed as damaged but repairable -- not destroyed. One of them was damaged after it was misidentified and shot up by a Spitfire over Hawkinge.

Two other RAF fighters were lost, but not due to combat. Hurricane P3359 crashed in bad weather during a routine patrol and Spitfire N3051 was damaged while landing on a waterlogged runway.

No Spitfires were destroyed and the one Hurricane destroyed during combat was caused by a collision, which means that none of the 27 or more German pilot claims are legitimate. That may also be the case with the Blenheims downed, but I'll look into it.


Prove it.