Quote:
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Originally Posted by John P Cooper
(comments of Jean-Yves Lorant and Hans Ring continued below..)
"..I interviewed Hartmann in the summer of 1979 for an article in Air Fan and was able to consult his only surviving logbook, carefully annotated with no crossings-out or 'suspicious additions' in different coloured inks as noted in other aces logbooks. Hartmann was a very modest man and the first to admit that it was not always possible to observe the crash sites of his downed opponents, always a dangerous luxury for a fighter pilot. An enemy aircraft was claimed if it produced a heavy trail of smoke, signifying a gasoline or engine fire. To witness an aircraft going down in a spin or in an uncontrolled fashion - with perhaps a dead or incapacitated pilot in the cockpit - was never a pretext for Hartmann to forward a victory claim, since similar manoeuvres were often flown by pilots seeking to break off combat
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If that was Erich Hartmann's 'method' for claiming victories -- it is all the proof we need that he was substantially overclaiming enemy aircraft destroyed and that his often-published score is grossly inflated.
To be fair, it was not uncommon for flyers to assume that an enemy plane would crash if it was trailing smoke. But, it is rather astonishing that an experienced hunter like Hartmann could be so amateurish to justify that as a policy -- after 1,500 combat missions!
A smoke trail does not even prove that the enemy plane was hit by gunfire. Many engines would belch smoke when the pilot selected full power. If the motor was not operating in top condition or the fuel was bad, the engine would emit more smoke. When a plane was hit by gunfire, a trail of smoke was hardly enough to guarantee that the enemy plane would crash.
Thank you for posting that link. The article was very enlightening.