Erich Hartmann: verifiable claims

[Andrew Arthy]

Bronc,

I've seen mention of Lipfert's 27 'unconfirmed' victories. His tally of 203 official victory claims is complete up to 16 April 1945, so it is certainly not a case of him being denied credit for late-war claims, which I think is what you are suggesting. All the official victory claims he made that were accepted by his Staffelkapitän and Kommandeur and submitted for confirmation by higher authorities are part of his tally of 203 – there are no missing official claims. I assume the 27 ‘unconfirmed’ were made by him earlier in the war and were either a) not approved by his Staffelkapitän or Kommandeur (e.g. due to lack of witnesses), and thus never passed up the chain, or b) they were passed up the chain and then rejected by the OKL.

No doubt Hartmann had some similar unconfirmed claims. To quote two examples for which I have evidence easily to hand, both Wolfrum (two on 8 April 1944, one on 10 April 1944) and Broch (23 August 1944) claimed victories without witnesses, and these were unconfirmed victories. These victories without witnesses were still official claims and were submitted to higher headquarters, appearing in situation reports as “o.Z.” (ohne Zeuge), but the pilots did not add them to their individual tallies. I assume this is the case for at least some of Lipfert’s 27 unconfirmed.

My understanding of the situation is that the victory tallies floating around the Internet and elsewhere associated with various high-scoring Luftwaffe pilots were those claims they officially submitted up to 8 May 1945, which were approved at Staffel and Gruppe level, and were then passed on to the OKL for final confirmation. Victory claims officially submitted from November 1944 onwards did not receive final confirmation from the OKL because the process took several months (and sometimes years), and of course the war ended. The vast majority of victory claims submitted to the OKL were confirmed, so the tally of initial claims usually matched with the claims officially confirmed later by the OKL. Basically, if a German pilot claimed a victory and it was accepted by his Staffelkapitän and Gruppenkommandeur and passed up the chain, it would later be confirmed by the OKL.

Thus I have no problem if the officially submitted post-November 1944 Luftwaffe claims are accepted as part of a pilot’s tally. If the German administration had kept functioning, basically all of the post-November 1944 claims would have been confirmed in due course. Instead, they remain as claims made in good faith by pilots and approved at Staffel and Gruppe level (and accepted at Fliegerkorps/Luftflotte level). So they are certainly official claims, just not confirmed at the very highest level.

So in summary, Hartmann is credited with 352 because that is how many victories he submitted official claims for. This is the same criteria used for all the other well-known tallies. Hartmann has not been attributed with any 'unofficial' victories - his tally of 352 is based on the same criteria as Lipfert's tally of 203, Wolfrum’s of 137, etc.

While I'm at it, I should point out that the Germans did have categories for enemy aircraft probably destroyed and damaged, and also shared victories (although I’ve only ever seen a couple of these), but these categories were used much less by the Germans than they were by the Western Allies.

Hope the above makes sense.

Cheers,
Andrew A.