Hartmann: claims vs. victories

[Johannes]

Hi Guys

Firstly Eder, he had one each A.S.M, E.V, V.N.E-A.S.M AND H.S.S, and in my humble opinion was a honest claimer.

The question of mistakes. We have been over the "didn't follow protocol" reason for an "over-claim", honest but not going by the book, or wingman too overworked to follow the book.

With water it's different, crash-sites were where possible investigated, in the East most claims were over Russian held territory so this was usually impossible to do, in the West it is more likely to be investigated, and in my opinion there are more unconfirmed claims in the west than East. But over water, there is usually no possibility to investigate, or should I say no wreck to investigate. Wilhelm Batz used ships and flak units for some of his earlier claims as witnesses over water..........what motivation is there for any of these to bare false witness?

The most accurate claimers were night-fighters, reasons for this are:-

1, the bombers were likely to burn very visibly.

2, the bombers were not able to escape using maneuvre like diving-away that looked like the aircraft was going down.

3, the night-fighters were in my opinion able to spend more time with a victim...........no swarms of escorting enemy fighters.

4, the calibre of guns was higher, you could say this for ZG units, but they would be more pressured by enemy fighters.

5, regarding witnesses, they would be the crew, the pilots got the majority of credit, therefore there was less incentive to bare false witness.

I think we have established that if two-thirds of a pilots claims actually crashed, then he was a honest, but sometimes mistaken pilot. I would add to this also "opportunity" a pilot would probably be able to make actual "fake claims" for only a limited period...........some pilots took this opportunity, other honest guys did not. I think of it like business men, the cheaters are often the most successful.

Kind Regards

Johannes