Re: Peter Duttmann vs "panzer"
 

I have been following this discussion with interest.

I believe Luftwaffe scored their most balloon victories during the Battle of Britain. Many Luftwaffe fighters took pot shots at the London balloon defence for instance. Where are all those victories? If Luftwaffe did count balloons as victories, they surely must have started that later in the war?

With regard to tanks I cannot think they counted as an aerial victory anywhere, unless the Allies had invented flying ones...:)
In such a case how do we look at Hans-Ulrich Rudel? The greatest ace of all time? I cannot believe the Luftwaffe had one counting system for fighter pilots and another for Stuka/SG pilots.

As with everything military during a long war, claims of course must have gone through some kind of evolution and it would be interesting, as Andy says, to see some primary evidence during the various stages of WW 2.

Cheers
Stig

Re: Peter Duttmann vs "panzer"
 

Hans Ulrich Rudel, the newly crowned Ace of Aces! S... H...! :)

Re: Peter Duttmann vs "panzer"
 

Hi,

Having done a bit of digging, it seems that some victories over balloons were credited as part of an individual's personal victory tally, and others were not. See the attached for a few more bits of evidence regarding balloons being shot down. Victories over balloons are also mentioned in the Luftwaffe regulations (also see attached). However, as interesting as this topic is, I should get back to my own research!

Cheers,
Andrew A.

Re: Peter Duttmann vs "panzer"
 

..which is why H-K Mayer's Bf 109 shows balloons as well as aircraft on its rudder

Re: Peter Duttmann vs "panzer"
 

On the Allied side, a quick check of my lists shows there's not much mention of balloons. I dunno, maybe the Germans didn't use them much, or maybe the lists just don't contain that detail.
The official scores for Alexander Rabagliati and Stanislaw Brzeski appear to include balloons.
Peter

Re: Peter Duttmann vs "panzer"
 

Hello all

Interesting discussion. Here is my interpretation. The Luftwaffe certainly counted destruction of ground targets including tanks, and these claims were part of the daily statistical data of various LW formations. Of course claims for tanks destroyed were not counted as aerial victories, but, claim for tank destroyed was of the same "value" as a confirmed aerial victory from the awards/promotions point of view (after all AFV is a hard target very difficult to knock out with aircraft weapons or ordnance of the period). That's why LW fighter pilots included them in the total tallies of their achievements (this is not the same as list of aerial victories).
And that's why I think this statement
is true, providing we would not count aerial victories as separate category in total list of one's achievements (Rudel's unique decoration readily comes to mind in this connection)

Re: Peter Duttmann vs "panzer"
 

Gentlemen,

There is a huge difference between unmanned defensive barrage balloons and observation balloons (manned). The rarity of the latter in WW2 is why balloons feature so rarely in pilot's scores. From memory I believe some few were used by the Germans on the Eastern Front during the first year or two of the war there. One occasionally sees photos of these on EBay.

While H-K Mayer may have had these marked on his aircraft's rudder I bet they were not counted in his total of victories.

Regards,

Martin Gleeson.

Re: Peter Duttmann vs "panzer"
 

Gentlemen,

Thanks for the responses. Regarding the question of whether balloons were included in a pilot's personal aerial victory tally, I believe the answer is "sometimes".

Looking at a list of all known Luftwaffe victory claims, there were at least ten for balloons submitted as individual aerial victory claims (and thus present in the victory claims microfilms). Nine of those were from the Eastern Front between 1942 and 1944, including the 12 September 1943 claim I included an extract from in my last post. Jochen Prien and his team list at least another eleven, of which seven are from 1939-1940, and four are from the Eastern Front in 1941.

I think Martin's post might be the key. The Luftwaffe regulations regarding claims distinguished between manned and unmanned balloons, so perhaps the type of balloon was the determining factor in whether it was added to the pilot's aerial victory tally. It might be the case that only manned balloons (which were a rare target and presumably only occurred on the Eastern Front) were included in a pilot's personal victory tally. Evidence of this is the comment by the claims adjudicator for the 12 September 1943 balloon, who wrote (rough translation) "In the documents it is not clear if this was a barrage balloon, manned balloon, or air ship". As a result, the claim was considered unconfirmed. All the other claims in the microfilms were confirmed, so the claimants in those cases must have specified that they shot down manned balloons.

Would be good to hear from others who have evidence regarding this subject.

Cheers,
Andrew A.

Re: Peter Duttmann vs "panzer"
 

Hello Martin,

Haven't the whole picture but both sides on the East had used the manned observation balloons up to Nov.1944 at least.

Best regards,
Andrey

Re: Peter Duttmann vs "panzer"
 

they were proud of balloon killing.


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