Erich Hartmann - several questions

[JoeB]

Originally Posted by Dénes Bernád

It has already been demonstrated that Khazanov's findings in regards of Hartmann's claims in East can be forgotten, as they are sloppy and possibly motivated by politics. So any references to his 'study' should be discarded outright.

This is what I have heard from other credible people besides yourself, though I have not studied it in detail myself.

But OTOH and from examples I know of, German fighter claiming in the second half of WWII was often pretty inaccurate, so even if as mentioned 80 covers only a portion of Hartmann's career and his total 'real' score were say in the low 100's (purely to give an example) that would not be a particularly poor ratio by the standards of all WWII fighter claiming, if the 'real' score is intended to represent distinct (from other 'friendly' claims) actual losses of the enemy.

Politics and national feelings sometimes enter into such discussions in a crude and obvious way. But even when they don't, there's still the question of 'standard of proof' and 'benefit of doubt'.

The two related questions, it seems, are:
1. whether competing claims on the ace's side, in the same combat, are considered
2. what's the standard of evidence for determining that enemy losses occurred in the same combat the ace described
Of course the difficulty in determining those two things varies enormously depending on the circumstances of combat and level of detail of each side's surviving records. In small theaters it's often obvious which units met in which combats even if the records are very sketchy, and the judgement of the researcher is only a matter of whether to consider the aces' comrades claims and consider the stated cause of loss (other than air combat) of opposing a/c. In a large theater it might be pratically impossible to disambiguate various engagements reported on each side and more claims and losses might have to be lumped together, or alternatively it gives a more distorted picture in a more complex theater to just consider the ace's claims and all possibly corresponding losses and call that 'verification'. But it isn't necessarily dishonest. Or, an author might just give all the enemy losses without saying whether he thinks they were all caused by the ace or what the probability is, so throwing the judgement call to the reader. Other authors adopt devices like calling it a 'victory' if one pilot drove another from the combat perhaps damaged, as he determined in his research, though not destroyed as the claiming pilot believed. IMHO that's not a 'verification' of a destroyed claim, though useful detail.

It's hard to evaluate a researcher's standards in these regards without oneself viewing the same source material that he used. But, though I know (have been told often!) that commercial considerations weigh against a lot of 'hemming and hawing' and talking about sources in a book or having footnotes, I still really prefer books or articles where at least in footnotes you get some hint of the strength and weakness of the sources, and thus strength of the conclusions about claim veracity (of individual pilots or units) that appear to be reached in the narrative.

Joe