Erich Hartmann: 352 victories or... 80?

[Christer Bergström]

Regarding claims made by fighters of the US 8th AF - just the few samples which my limited time permits (I have much more material upon which my conclusion is based, but neither time nor space allows me to write it all down here) :

German day fighter combat losses in "the West" or over Germany April 1944: 574 (including approximately 70 % to US fighters, an assumption based on extrapolated statistics for a number of selected Geschwader).

Aerial victory claims made by fighters of the US 8th & 9th AF in April 1944: 418

German day fighter combat losses in "the West" or over Germany May 1944: 630 (including approximately 80 % to US fighters, an assumption based on extrapolated statistics for a number of selected Geschwader).

Aerial victory claims made by fighters of US 8th & 9th AF in May 1944: 596

So for those two months, we have approximately 905 German fighters actually shot down by fighters of US 8th and 9th AF, while these US fighters were credited with a total of 1,014 aerial victories. That is an average of 0.9 aircraft actually shot down for every Us fighter claim - close to 1:1, as I said.

Regarding claims made by RAF Fighter Command (from Caldwell's "JG 26 War Diary", Vol. 2) (I have much more material upon which my conclusion is based, but neither time nor space allows me to write it all down here) :

March 1942:
RAF Fighter Command aerial victory claims (admitted as destroyed) : 53
Actual Luftflotte 3 losses: 11

April 1942:
RAF Fighter Command aerial victory claims (admitted as destroyed) : 66
Actual Luftflotte 3 losses: 24

For those two months we have 119 RAF Fighter Command claims versus 35 actual Luftwaffe losses, or a relation of 3.4 : 1.

US overclaims in the Mediterranean: See "Fighters over Tunisia" by Shores, Ring and Hess. (I have much more material upon which my conclusion is based, but neither time nor space allows me to write it all down here.)My time is limited, and I have no tables for comparison like the ones above, only a lot of cases which form a clear tendency. Here are two examples:

10 April 1943: US 1st FG claimed 18 Ju 52s and 8 MC 200s (of which one was claimed as an "Fw 190") while actual Axis losses in that combat were 10 transport planes and 2 MC 200s.

9 October 1943: US 14th FG claimed to have shot down 17 Ju 87s (including 7 by Maj. W. L. Keverette, the highest single-mission score by any US pilot in either the MTO or the MTO) while actual German losses were 8 Ju 87s (from II./StG 3).

For those two cases we have 43 claims against 20 actual losses, i.e. an overclaims ratio of more than 2:1.

While US fighter pilots in the Mediterranean regularly made such overclaims, the fighter pilots of the 8th AF only rarely made such high overclaims. (I have much more material upon which my conclusion is based, but neither time nor space allows me to write it all down here.)

I'm sorry if I don't have time to list more examples, but I can only establish that when I earlier today asked Franek to provide me with examples and sources to his statement about low moral in a certain air unit, he rather rudly told me that he refused to do so (claiming that he had provided me with such information previously, which is not true).

I thus end my discussion with Franek, and offer him the final word which I will not reply. It is not my intention to allow myself to be dragged down into another meaningless head game. I gave the facts above only because I know that other people here find the topic interesting and the facts useful.