Barkhorn: claims vs. victories

[Johannes]

Hi Gabor

Think you are saying that Barkhorn was mistaken in about sixty of his claims, more of a case of not following claiming protocol rather than direct over-claiming.
He once uncovered a scam by a fellow pilot, in this they were themselves filing paperwork to the RLM that should have been for the general unit i.e not a single pilot. Barkhorn was horrified and put a stop to it.

Doesn't of course mean he wasn't an over-claimer, I have worked with incompetent managers who to cover their uselessness spend their time attacking others just to draw attention away from there own failings.

Unlike Hartman we have many of the abschussmeldung of Barkhorn that give exact crash-sites and witnesses. Without cross-examining against these other pilots, there are only two periods that would possibly be dodgy, and by this the constant use of the same witnesses, this being claims number 209-251 of which thirty-two have Heinz Ewald as witness, and numbers 140-160 which all had Karl-Heinz Plucker as witness. I have the abschussmeldung of numbers 65-139 and they are a total mix of witnesses, many of who are proven honest claimers.

Naturally we assume that the wingmen are competent, experienced and not lazy.

We are in agreemant with Barkhorn's 1945 claims being too vague to investigate

Have you anylized Walter Nowotn'y claims yet?

Kind Regards

johannes