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Old 5th May 2005, 17:34
Franek Grabowski Franek Grabowski is offline
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Re: German overclaims in the East. Hartmann and others...

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Only then there will be a reliable picture of possible overclaiming or on the contrary the author could prove almost all of the victories by the pilot at issue (as it happened in case with Alfred Grislawski). Unfortunatelly, all German pilots biographies are week when it comes to show what their adversaries come around, exept maybe the recent "Graf-Grislawski" book.
I do not think any reliable picture of combats of German airmen is possible. The reason is simple - lack of German narratives and combat reports. Place and location is just not enough and may lead to serious mistakes.

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The same situation with the 100th victory by Anton Hackl, who claimed Pe-2 on August 3, 1942. Accounts of 2 VA and 15 VA show that no Pe-2s were lost that day...etc.etc.
The question is if records of VA level are accurate enough. Personally I doubt it and would not draw any definite conclusions without checking documents of eg. AP level.

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For example in the period between March 1943 and August 1944 III./JG 52 claimed approximately 900 "LaGGs", some 250 Airacobras and only some 20 Yaks of various versions.
I would just sort all the claims as single and twin engined. It makes life much simplier.

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It would be very interesting to see a statistic with losses / claims / etc unit-wise like the lists that John Alcorn presented about BoB in the magazine Aeroplane in 2000 while cross-checking with other sources
I have mixed feelings concerning the article. Certainly interesting approach but the tables are more misleading than informative.
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