Erich Hartmann - several questions

[Johannes]

To answer Huy Horta

My friend Bernd Barbas knows more about Jg52 than anybody dead or alive i should think. Personally he doesn't believe the Hartmann fraud stories, and knew Hartmann himself very well. However he has spoken to many Jg52 pilots who were not happy with Hartmann(but not in a fraud way). I should imagine that apart from anything else prestige was a good reason to encourage Hartmann into the Bundesluftwaffe!
I have wondered why though that Hartmann didn't dispell the mythe about his Mustang claims, surely somebody asked him, or he talked about it? Bernd Barbas questioned Fritz Obleser about his U.S claims ten years ago, so for 55 years we all believed nine U.S aircraft, yet when I pressed Bernd to ask him as none were on the micro Films he(Obleser) stated " Oh, mr Barbas I have no details the American's stole my log-book, but I did shoot down nine U.S aircraft, but I never submitted the claims, as I was too busy trying to stay alive to watch them crash"
So does anybody have details of Erich recollection of the Mustang's?, yet these would have been the easiest of his claims to dis-credit........yet nobody could! Don't know how hard it would be for Eastern claims, but very hard I should think, unit overlapped, not like Jg5 which was isolated.
I would look forward to seeing his name cleared in the future!
But regarding Dmitriy Khazanov, if it was political why dis-credit some and not others.
From the Luftwaffe point of view, in the West they recorded and examined the crash sites of pilots claims, but in the East it was usually in enemy territory, so not possible to prove one way or other whether in general claims were accurate!
I guess Hartmann's last claim over Brunn, i.e it crashed into the central platz, should be provable!

Regards

Johannes

[Nick Beale]

Originally Posted by Johannes

To answer Huy Horta

From the Luftwaffe point of view, in the West they recorded and examined the crash sites of pilots claims …

Johannes

I have found incidents in Italy where they simply can't have done this, even where the claimed aircraft crashed around the Germans' own airfield. Had they searched, there would not have been enough wrecked aircraft for the claims that were allowed. They had a strong formal verification system but such systems are not always operated perfectly.