Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?

[marsyao]

FalkeEin, it looks like your link contains majorly the comments from Mr Ring, where is the original article of Khazanov ?

[Graham Boak]

Denes suggests a ratio of 2:1 for claims to kills: I believe that Chris Shores, with all his experience, has said the same. I would point out however, that this ratio is not an overall factor. In times of intense fighting this can rise dramatically, and 3:1 is certainly not unreasonable, having been seen in many occaisons. Using this might suggest a total of some 120 for Hartmann, but even if we assume that 80 is a "correct" figure, so what? Similar factors would apply to almost everyone on the Eastern front, and indeed elsewhere.

Only 80. Wow, what a poor result. No?

From what has been seen elsewhere when both sides records have been compared, I fully expect many of these Luftwaffe totals to reduce significantly. As will Soviet totals. As will Japanese and USN Pacific totals. As have RAF, USAAF and Luftwaffe totals where comparisons have been possible. I don't believe that it diminishes the individuals concerned.

[Six Nifty .50s]

Originally Posted by Graham Boak

Denes suggests a ratio of 2:1 for claims to kills: I believe that Chris Shores, with all his experience, has said the same. I would point out however, that this ratio is not an overall factor. In times of intense fighting this can rise dramatically, and 3:1 is certainly not unreasonable.

I would be interested to know how he arrived at '2:1' as an average for inflated pilot claims.

July 10th, 1940 is usually regarded as the first day of the Battle of Britain. Stephen Bungay, author of The Most Dangerous Enemy, said that German pilots claimed to have shot down 30 RAF day fighters. (Another source, Tony Wood's Web site, lists 21 Spitfires and 6 Hurricanes claimed). But only one British fighter was destroyed in those combats: Hurricane P3671 crashed after a mid-air collision with a German Do 17.

In addition, RAF Bomber Command launched six Blenheims for a low level attack on Amiens airfield. German pilots claimed seven destroyed, but only five were lost. Bungay seems to have implied that all five Blenheims were downed by German flak units, which opened fire before the Bf 109s arrived. Unfortunately I don't have a copy of the 107 Squadron history, so I cannot cross-check that.

Originally Posted by Graham Boak

Only 80. Wow, what a poor result. No?

I have nothing against Erich Hartmann, but so far I have not seen anyone offer hard evidence that he destroyed 40 enemy planes, let alone 80.

Hartmann must have been a very shrewd pilot because he managed to survive several years of combat, but 352 kills is undoubtedly a fantasy. I would challenge his pundits to prove otherwise.

[Dénes Bernád]

Originally Posted by Six Nifty .50s

I would be interested to know how he arrived at '2:1' as an average for inflated pilot claims.

First, let me clarify that Graham quoted me erroneously in his post. It was someone else who stated this.

Second, I tackled the thorny issue of overclaiming in my books in a couple of occasions.

One was in my 'Rumanian Air Force. The Prime Decade (1938-1947)' book, published by Squadron/Signal.
On page 6 I noted: "It is believed that Rumanian pilots and gunners claimed up to three times as many aircraft destroyed [in the 1941 campaign of Bessarabia and South-Western Ukraine] than was actually the case. (This was not a unique occurrence. According to a notable British researcher, RAF flyers filed five claims for one actual Luftwaffe combat loss during June 1941 [about the same time period])."
I must say that I received 'flak' from certain Rumanian researchers by raising this controversial issue for the first time...

Then, I noted in my 'Rumanian Aces of W.W. 2', published by Osprey, the following (page 37): "In the ensuing aerial battles, which peaked in May [1944], both sides [i.e., VVS and Luftwaffe & ARR] claimed an impressive number of victories. That month alone, ARR fighter pilots received credit for 50 Soviet airplanes downed, while another dozen claims remained unconfirmed.
By rigurously comparing loss data of both sides with victory claims, one can draw the conclusion that overclaiming was again widespread on both sides.
Indeed, in a private letter, a noted Russian aviation researcher approximates that during the May offensive alone, Soviet airmen fighting on the Moldavian front filed four times more claims than actual Axis losses, while he approximates that the Axis side overclaimed three times as many claims - a remarkable, albeit unofficial admission."

Very interesting discussion, by the way. I hope it will stay on course, and won't degenerate into flame war and name calling...

[Juha]

Hello I more or less agreed with Christer on USAAF, but IIRC RAF got its claim procedures more reliable later on.

One detail on 9 October 1943, besides Leverette’s and co claims, the Allied ships (one AA cruiser and 3 destroyers from RN plus one Greek ship) against which the Ju 87s from II./StG 3 were attacking when the Lightnings arrived claimed 3. On the debit side one destroyer was sunk and the AA cruiser Carlisle was very badly damaged. It was towed back to Alexandria but was never repaired.

Juha

[Laurent Rizzotti]

My two cents. I read the article last month and write of memory.

I think both number of 352 and 80 are ridiculous. Most of the times overclaiming is 25-40% so Hartmann probably shot down 200-250 aircraft.
The original article uses all the revisionist tricks. Basically pick some precise cases to show that the "usual story" is wrong, and then using these as a proof that all cases are wrong. In the article, the author gives some examples, uses them to justify the fact that Hartmann only shot down less than 1/4 of his claims and in another "generalization" (don't remember if it is implicit or openly written) doubts the veracity of the German fighters in general.
In this case, the author seems to have choosen the wrong examples or to have quoten bad sources (another usual aspect of revisionism, that usually shows outdated wrong sources, so proving them wrong is easier.... and obviously not saying that every serious historian knows these sources are wrong).

While reading the article, I was thinking (as I always did with "revisionism"): what is the goal of this ? You will notice that putting the score of Hartmann at 80 is telling the best German ace "really" scored less victories than the best Soviet ace, who scored more than 80 victories. This is absolutely not written in the article and only my personnal interpretation.
The "who shot down who" question is most often a very difficult one and often misleading... A part of the "solved" cases compared partial list of losses with partial list of claims. A more interesting question is to try to compare global victories to global losses, when possible for each battle (a battle that may last hours and expand on hundred of kilometers in the case of the big Allied raids over Germany).

[marsyao]

Laurent,the top Sovie ace's score were 62 kills

[MB]

You know, friends, Khazanov's work is undoubtedly weak... But the 'reply' of his opponents Jean-Yves Lorant and Hans Ring - is more, more weaker! That place: "the disparate & incomplete nature of the Soviet archives precludes any objective analysis - who shot down who" - is so stupid that after them all other words are in vain... Had worked those men in "Soviet atchives" just one day?..

[marsyao]

MB, MB is an excellent researcher, although a little old school, so please show a little respect to him. The thing really concern me is that we have not read the full text of Mr Khazanov's article, only thing we read are piece of text from here and there, and Mr Ring's comment, not the whole picture, so how could we make a judgement by ourself only base on those ?

[Jens]

The NKWD Argument to proove the kills is a little bit ridicioulus, in my opinion.

NKWD accused Hartmann also for destroying a bred fabrication site, which were at JG-54 sector situated, killing 780 civilians due powerless bullets and for destroying 346 russian airplanes.

So Hartmann really killed so much civilians?