[Juha]

Hello Ruy
Quote: ” We easily dismiss German claims…”

We? I have not seen anybody here to dismiss German claims easily. I have no doubt that some 100 highest scorers of WWII were all LW fighter pilots. What I don’t know is was Hartmann the top scorer or not. Barkhorn seems to have usually been a reliable claimer, so if his claims were say 80% accurate and Hartmann’s 60% accurate, which in fact wasn’t bad claim accuracy, Hartmann isn’t anymore the number one in actual kills. I can easily believe that Hartmann was among the 20 most successful fighter pilots of all times but what was the actual number of his kills, who knows. There may be some gaps in Soviet loss figures but we know that Soviet researchers have more easily found matches to the claims of some German aces than to claims of some others. Nowotny seemed to have been very unreliable claimer at the beginning of his career, how accurate he was later, I have no exact info. There seems to have also been problems with a number of Hartmann’s claim but on that I don’t have any exact info either.

On Lang’s 18 accepted claims on 3 Nov 43. Now he was leading all volunteer lonely schwarm fighting all alone from Kiev airfield, during next night the small band were hiding from marauding Soviet T-34s and their tank-riders in the ruins. Add to that that he overclaimed later during Normandy fighting. And of course Göbbels' machine made on Lang front page stories in weeks to come, after all Winter 43/44 wasn’t the most successful time for 3rd Reich. But IMHO the most important thing in Lang's military career was that he was a very good leader of his men not that how much he overclaim.

And the the "Expertenschwarm" of 4./JG 27 and how Edu Neumann handled the case are facts. But as I wrote, overclaiming wasn’t a German phenomenon but universal.

Hello FalkeEins

yes, in 50s there was a great need on "Good Germans" because West-Germany was wanted to be integrated into West and into NATO.

Juha