[Johannes]

Hi Guys

In my experience the most accurate area of claiming was by the night-fighters whose victims often burned which is very obvious, and second attacks much less risky, so in that respect I agree that Hartmann's method of attack would be much less often fatal, but there still lies the question of formality i.e the crash has to be witnessed. As explained before Fritz Obleser is often credited with claims against the U.S.A.A.F, but none appear on the mikrofilms, fortunately we were able to question him about this before his death, actually we presented him with an abschüßelist, as his flugbuch was stolen during 1945, yet still he stated that though he himself was sure he had shot-down nine American aircraft, but he did not submit the claims as in each case he was too pressured to wait around to witness the actual crash. Perhaps Hartmann was not so adhering to formality. Even so checking his claims against his comrades there does seem to be collusion at times as per back scratching, and other periods where his claims are not explained away but this.
A new angle could be the witnesses, with night-fighter I am guessing that the gunner/radio operators fulfilled this job, which is strange as this would be an obvious opener for false claims, yet then why are they so accurate?....my guess is that the crash-sites were easily open to investigation, can't be that these guys were just all an honest bunch. Now day-time ZG units claims are actually not very accurate, especially earlier on, during the battle of Britain there would be no crash-site available.
In the East usually crash-sites were not available for examination. Also I have noticed that the worst offenders were also Gruppenkommandeur, with Rudorffer he obviously used his wingman Tangermann back scratching wise, but not Hartmann or Nowotny, I don't know, and am looking for an answer as to who signs-off a Kommandeur or Kommodore's claim. Nowotny's earlier claims(prior to being Kommandeur) were obviously achieved with back scratching using Dobele and Loos.
Hartmann was not popular among his comrades, not necessarily because he was suspected by them of false-claims, he was a poor officer, but what of his personality?
Marseille's wingmen had a hard job just keeping-up with recording his claims including the crash-sites, but it was done, so it can be done.
Hartmann records only one claim whilst flying for JG53, in a period when there should really have been more, but his 1945 claims are generally vague anyway and as such cannot really be investigated as in most cases we cannot even really be sure about the dates net alone time or place, or even aircraft type.

An over-claimers pattern of "kills" are usually very obvious, Hartmann, Rudorffer, Nowotny all follows this pattern, whereas Günther Rall, Walter Krupinski and Helmut Lipfert stand out particularly as not following this pattern, but Marseille's does....a one-off ?

Kind Regards

Johannes