[Johannes]

Hi Guys

Firstly Franek it is true that crash-sites were investigated, claims against the Russian's were usually behind enemy lines, so no chance there, with JG2 they claimed a lot over the sea, again not much chance to investigate there.

As Nick states Emil Lang was with JG26, yet still managed to overclaim. We(TOCH) had established that Lang had a couple of months of huge claims in Russia, this was worked with his rottenflieger Reinhold Hoffmann a pure case of each confirming the others claims.....mostly non-existant, yet another of Lang's rottenflieger Alfred Gross doesn't appear to have been part of this, when Hoffmann and Lang part company their claims became unspectacular! You would imagine that he would not be able to achieve such crimes with JG26, however he was with the Stab.II./JG26, and very possibly flew only with Alfred Gross, therefore able to maintain the deception within a generally honest Geschwader.


As Nick has established II./JG2 had a horrendous record of overclaiming in Afrika, but the JG26 as above......one man making the others look bad. The ever so fantastic claims system should work, but they didn't consider like minded abusers of the system, basically you couldn't do it alone.


As for the Luftwaffe being part of an evil regime, I should imagine that there was a higher percentage of hard-liners here than in the army, but most pilots were not like this and only wanted to get through the war, and many not to talk about it again. Wasn't Heinz Knoke shunned at reunions for his political views! Anyway TOCH is to talk about the Luftwaffe not Nazism., but I have noticed that hard-liners were very often the worst over-claimers.


regarding other Airforces overclaiming just check USAAF gunners claims 340 claims one day to Luftwaffe twenty loses, and what about Douglas Bader, seems every Nation has it's liars.

With Georg-Peter Eder all I am trying to establish is where the twelve jet kills data came from? As to his claims there pattern doesn't look like an overclaimers i.e huge numbers over a short period...….again opportunism with a corruptible rottenflieger, Eder seems not to have used a regular rottenflieger, and as Nick points-out III./JG2 was the least scoring of JG2's Gruppen……………….but unless expertly cross-examined I don't know the truth, and contrary to what you say claims are being cross-examined......by Nick for a start.


Kind Regards


Johannes