Erich Hartmann - several questions

[Johannes]

Hi

Regarding the term "fraudulent", I would use this as an advancement on "overclaim", yes, Wurmheller was such a severe overclaimer that it was more than that. Do you remember the Jg27 ace who crept up behind the unit super Schwarm and found them firing-off there amo over the desert, and retuned to tell his C.O what he had seen, and you know that when they got back, it was all heavy claiming......that's fraudulence. now Jg26 and Jg2 often overlapped, attacking the same formations, when Jg26 claimed alone, it was more than quite accurate, when the wto both claimed the Allied losses simply did not match up to Luftwaffe claims, yet some Jg2 pilots were honest. Assuming that the Russian losses have been calculated correctly then Jg5 were above overclaiming, in fact overclaiming can be acquired by just being mistaking, if you think it went down are you a fraud or just plain mistaken. Another person who made outrageous claims was August Lambert, he was disliked by his C.O, jealousy, or did his C.O suspect somthing?
With Jg5 it would seem that it wasn't just get one claim two, if fact I read somewhere that this units pilots were quite happy to witness more claims than actually occurence, well in the far North anyway!
Strange thing also about Hartmann, only two u/c ever!
Perhaps we need the Russian actual losses so we can scrutinise them!

Regards

Johannes

[DiegoZampini]

Dear Johannes:

Originally Posted by Johannes

Hi
Another person who made outrageous claims was August Lambert, he was disliked by his C.O, jealousy, or did his C.O suspect somthing?

Not surprisingly, both Hartmann and Lambert fought in the same place - Crimea peninsula. I barely researched about this matter, but it seems that the Soviet actual losses of 4 VA and VVS ChF in late 1943-early 1944 were not that serious like the claims of JG 52 and SchG 1 might indicate.

With Jg5 it would seem that it wasn't just get one claim two, if fact I read somewhere that this units pilots were quite happy to witness more claims than actually occurence, well in the far North anyway!

You are talking about the article "Pishem 8, 2 v ume" ("We write 8, but have 2 in mind"): The author clearly shows the huge overclaiming of one of the JG 5 "stars" - Rudolf Müller. Only 37 out of his 92 claims can be corroborated by Soviet records, and so did all his buddies.

Strange thing also about Hartmann, only two u/c ever!
Perhaps we need the Russian actual losses so we can scrutinise them!

It seems that Eduard Morozov (author of Vozdushnaya Bitva na Sevastopole 1941-1942 gg (Air Battle over Sevastopol 1941-42) prepares a new book about the air battles over Crimea 1943-44. It might help a lot to clarify how many losses did the Russians suffer, and to solve this discussion (at least regarding Hartmann and Albert).
Kind regards,
Diego

[ruspren]

Originally Posted by Johannes

Hi

Do you remember the Jg27 ace who crept up behind the unit super Schwarm and found them firing-off there amo over the desert, and retuned to tell his C.O what he had seen, and you know that when they got back, it was all heavy claiming......that's fraudulence.
Regards

Johannes

It was "Fifi" Stahlschmidt of 2.JG/27 who "crept up on" that Schwarm. They were making fraudulent claims and yet you don't name them!
Vogel,Sawallisch,Bendert and Stigler of 4.JG27. They got away with it despite a going over from the Gruppenkommandeur (Gustav Roedel). They were however "seperated".
Russ.