Hartmann: claims vs. victories

[rof120]

Adolf Galland was one of them, at least from a certain date on. There is a well-known frame from one of his combat footages shot on November 1, 1940: it clearly shows the shooting down of a "Spitfire", Galland's fiftieth victim. Thanks to the tracers giving continuous (thick) straight lines on the picture you even can see the difference between the flight paths of the missiles fired by the two machine-guns mounted on the engine (close to each other) and by the right wing cannon, the distance between the two being (of course) exactly the right one. The tracers from the left cannon left a trace too but it is much less straightforward: it's undulating behind and below the "Spitfire". You can see this phenomenon on numerous pictures of this kind (the camera jumped or vibrated because of the powerful recoil of the cannon). The German press reported this event profusely and most probably reproduced one or several frames. See "Der Adler", "Signal" and also the German dailies etc.

(Galland was the CO of JG 26.)

Certainly some other German fighter pilots got a gun camera too, especially Mölders, probably Wick, and others.