[Johannes]

Hi

With Lang I agree, he had his wingman Alfred Gross to work with in my opinion. Cannot find any such aid for Günther Rall, in fact I believe he was honest. Another tool you can use is the East is A.S.M, basically claim is somewhat disputed, but eventually confirmed. If you were making fraudulent claims with your wingman there should be no such claims for you, basically the two of you will claim nice clean "kills" and with Hartmann it's amazing that with over 300 claims documented on the micro films that he has no A.S.M's at all, in fact there were only ever two u/c claims for him, and these going by memory were because he was forced to belly-land shortly afterwards behind Russian lines. Basically in my opinion if a pilot has A.S.M in the East he is honest, obviously somebody with few claims may not have any, but with many they should have some. With Lang he got seventeen(not eighteen) in a single day, and sixty-eight in a calender month, and only one A.S.M on 28th July 1943, which was prior to his association with Gross......who himself had no A.S.M's in the East! With Rudorffer when he makes just one or two claims in a day Tangermann seems not to have been with him, so these are in my opinion probably legitimate, and Rall did have a few A.S.M's. With Hartmann I would think his first seventeen were legitimate as they were before his big claiming days, same could probably be said about Lang before he met Gross.
Johannes Steinhoff has a few A.S.M's and no significant wingmen, so I suspect he was honest, and as he spent considerable time in the West it should be easy to prove so.

Kind Regards

Johannes

P.S please be critical about what you think about the A.S.M idee.....it's just a thought!