[Johannes]

Hi Gabor

We agree that Barkhorn was honest then, perhaps some non-conforming with claims protocol when it comes to actual witnessing the crash, but as you say bad weather, and the Bf109 did have poor visibility itself. Also I would guess that Barkhorn like Hartmann and Rall claimed mostly fighter aircraft who's escape might have looked like death-dive.

Barkhorn was ambitious in his way, he thought his Schwerter an inferior decoration, as did Rall, both I think would have been awarded the Brillianten if it were not for Nowotny and Hartmann.

I maintain that with JG52 the most suspicious Gruppe was III, especially 9th then 7th staffel, and the least suspicious Gruppe was I. The more flugbücher I read the more I realize that more often than not they flew at Rotte, hardly ever as a full staffel. But also there had to be opportunity, even a dis-honest claimer needed opportunity, sometimes a pilot just fell in with a bad person, most often over-claiming by a pilot took place as one certain time in his career, then abruptly stops, good case for this is Emil Lang, reading Norbert Hannig's book Lang's record breaking day was planned-out, he had organised his wingmen that day for a series of sorties. In fact Lang's record breaking claiming spree was quite brief, then ends as abruptly as it started. With Maximilian Stotz it's the same, the opportunistic association with Hans Hahn in my opinion.

What is your opinion on Wilhlem Batz, he I think would be in your sphere of research, and his claims pattern highly suspicious, yet his earlier claims were very often not witnessed by a wingman, but by ground units, and he seems to have been flying alone for much of this period. I'll try to associate him with certain wingmen, but nothing is obvious to me by memory.

Take care

Johannes