[HGabor]

Hartmann kept overclaiming over Hungary. If I am a nice guy to him, I'd say about 50%, if I am strict, it can be up to 70%. (Depends on if I approve a soviet loss within 30, 60, or more minutes and/or 5-10-15, etc. km difference to his claims.)

Perhaps his own personal ambitions and the Luftwaffe's propaganda need in difficult times for a German 'superhero' met in his case and therefore his officials allowed his behavior. I don't know.

But the fact is that many of his claims have no evidences in soviet loss-records, while for eg. Helmut Lipfert they match for over 90%! (in Hungary) So it's not the soviet records, but the pilots, who claimed them. The multiple levels of cross-references in the soviet mechanical reports (especially in 1944-45) did not allow manipulation with the numbers, so aircraft losses could not be hidden. And of course the soviets did not know who shot them down, so it is absolutely not realistic to say that they manipulated the records, just to push Hartmann's achievements down.