Barkhorn: claims vs. victories

[Nick Hector]

Originally Posted by HGabor

Could be, but how many (or what %) of Rall's, or Kittel's victories were matching soviet loss records? The final, credited number of victories is irrelevant, as they still could be full of overclaims (just like Hartmann's). What really matters here is the matching and verified records. Would be nice to know..

Gabor

Hi Gabor, for your interest:

I believe it was posted on here earlier as part of a different thread, but here is a Russian-language forum with an excellent comparison of German victory claims in the northern sector during September-October 1944. You will be able to see that many of Kittel's claims appear to be well-substantiated:

https://forum-kenig.ru/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=4513

Rall remains a bit more of an unknown quantity, so I am inclined to agree with Boris Ciglic

[HGabor]

Thanks Nick, excellent material!
Gabor

[Nick Hector]

Cheers Gabor,
Now, as always, well done and keep up the good work!

[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

[Johannes]

Hi Guys

I did compare the claims of Barkhorn to those of his wingman Karl-Heinrich Plucker, and can state that there was no collusion between them in the normal sense of baring false witness to each others claims. Regarding his earlier claims, the abschussmeldung also mention if the pilot/crew bailed-out, and any fire, from where he attacked, also the witnesses story, the bailing-out part I would think being most useful.

Keep well

Johannes

[HGabor]

Hi Johannes,

Barkhorn's claims are very accurate and reliable, even the planes that he did not completely destroy, only damaged show up is soviet combat records. It is too bad that no further details are known about his January, 1945 claims where the soviet 5th and 17th VA loss records are all available. His analyzed 15 claims in the fall/winter of 1944 show a reliable pattern, were the final overclaims might have been related just to the poor winter visibility. His earlier claims in good visibility were pretty much right on. The approx. 60 planes that were not completely destroyed are simply calculated from the statistics, where -of course- a larger number might result a more accurate ratio. I can easily imagine that in case of a deeper analysis of not 15, but eg. 50, or more claims would result a much more accurate victory ratio with significantly less overclaims on his side. In order to properly analyze Barkhorn's further (or other Axis aces') claims we must know the details of the opponent soviet units' loss records, which at this point are available for only the soviet 5th and 17th Air Armies, supporting the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts' ground forces in Hungary, Slovakia, Austria and partially in the Czech Republic. Aces, whose op. area fell out of this region cannot be analyzed in details yet. But research does not stop..

Gabor

[Johannes]

Hi Gabor

We agree that Barkhorn was honest then, perhaps some non-conforming with claims protocol when it comes to actual witnessing the crash, but as you say bad weather, and the Bf109 did have poor visibility itself. Also I would guess that Barkhorn like Hartmann and Rall claimed mostly fighter aircraft who's escape might have looked like death-dive.

Barkhorn was ambitious in his way, he thought his Schwerter an inferior decoration, as did Rall, both I think would have been awarded the Brillianten if it were not for Nowotny and Hartmann.

I maintain that with JG52 the most suspicious Gruppe was III, especially 9th then 7th staffel, and the least suspicious Gruppe was I. The more flugbücher I read the more I realize that more often than not they flew at Rotte, hardly ever as a full staffel. But also there had to be opportunity, even a dis-honest claimer needed opportunity, sometimes a pilot just fell in with a bad person, most often over-claiming by a pilot took place as one certain time in his career, then abruptly stops, good case for this is Emil Lang, reading Norbert Hannig's book Lang's record breaking day was planned-out, he had organised his wingmen that day for a series of sorties. In fact Lang's record breaking claiming spree was quite brief, then ends as abruptly as it started. With Maximilian Stotz it's the same, the opportunistic association with Hans Hahn in my opinion.

What is your opinion on Wilhlem Batz, he I think would be in your sphere of research, and his claims pattern highly suspicious, yet his earlier claims were very often not witnessed by a wingman, but by ground units, and he seems to have been flying alone for much of this period. I'll try to associate him with certain wingmen, but nothing is obvious to me by memory.

Take care

Johannes

[HGabor]

Hi Johannes, looks like unfortunately Wilhelm Batz (Stab III/JG 52) was not serving in the 2nd, or 3rd Ukrainian Front area in the late September, 1944 - May, 1945 timeframe, for which I have the soviet records.

Gabor

[mars]

Originally Posted by Johannes

Hi Gabor

In fact Lang's record breaking claiming spree was quite brief, then ends as abruptly as it started. With Maximilian Stotz it's the same, the opportunistic association with Hans Hahn in my opinion.

Take care

Johannes

So Hans "Assi" Hahn was an overclaimer too ?