Erich Hartmann: verifiable claims

[Broncazonk]

Hartmann religiously utilized a four-part method for engaging enemy aircraft: (1) Locate, (2) Decide (whether it was safe and prudent to attack), Attack (from behind with surprise), (4) Break away. As best as I can determine, Hartmann did not believe in dogfighting anything, or anyone, at any time, anywhere.

The hit and run, boom and zoom, break away approach to aerial combat maximizes your chances at survival, but it minimizes your time and opportunity to gain and verify a victory. Maybe Hartmann and his wingmen got into the habit of breaking away after the first squirt? The opposing aircraft nearly always went directionally downward after something like that...

---> Has anyone actually read any of Hartmann's reports or claims? What was he actually saying in them??

Wish we knew more...

Bronc

[Jim Oxley]

Another aspect that should be considered is that, if Hartman's score is placed under such scrutiny, then so to should all the other Luftwaffe aces in the 200+ bracket.

Is the goal to re-write the history books? Or to see who in fact was the highest scoring Luftwaffe ace? Surely not just a Hartman witch hunt.

It would be doing everyone a disservice if Barkhorn, Rall, Kittel, Nowotny, Batz, Rudorffer, Bar, Graf and other's claims were not also given the same intense analysis and match-up to Soviet losses.

[Juha]

Originally Posted by Jim Oxley

Another aspect that should be considered is that, if Hartman's score is placed under such scrutiny, then so to should all the other Luftwaffe aces in the 200+ bracket.

Is the goal to re-write the history books? Or to see who in fact was the highest scoring Luftwaffe ace? Surely not just a Hartman witch hunt.

It would be doing everyone a disservice if Barkhorn, Rall, Kittel, Nowotny, Batz, Rudorffer, Bar, Graf and other's claims were not also given the same intense analysis and match-up to Soviet losses.

In fact we have already talked on Nowotny's early claims and problems with some of Rudorffer's claims. Also on Lipfert's claims and Gabor has wrote on German claims over Hungary in 1944/45 incl. Düttmann's claims etc.

juha

[Broncazonk]

Originally Posted by Jim Oxley

Another aspect that should be considered is that, if Hartman's score is placed under such scrutiny, then so to should all the other Luftwaffe aces in the 200+ bracket.

Is the goal to re-write the history books? Or to see who in fact was the highest scoring Luftwaffe ace? Surely not just a Hartman witch hunt.

It would be doing everyone a disservice if Barkhorn, Rall, Kittel, Nowotny, Batz, Rudorffer, Bar, Graf and other's claims were not also given the same intense analysis and match-up to Soviet losses.

Agree whole-heartedly. And I wish I could help. It's a huge job that would be placed on a very limited number of shoulders.

Bronc

[Nick Hector]

Originally Posted by Jim Oxley

Another aspect that should be considered is that, if Hartman's score is placed under such scrutiny, then so to should all the other Luftwaffe aces in the 200+ bracket.

Is the goal to re-write the history books? Or to see who in fact was the highest scoring Luftwaffe ace? Surely not just a Hartman witch hunt.

It would be doing everyone a disservice if Barkhorn, Rall, Kittel, Nowotny, Batz, Rudorffer, Bar, Graf and other's claims were not also given the same intense analysis and match-up to Soviet losses.

Christer Bergstroem gave us a pretty good start with Graf in his book "A Pair of Aces" which deals with that pilot along with Alfred Grislawski

[Nick Beale]

Originally Posted by Jim Oxley

Another aspect that should be considered is that, if Hartman's score is placed under such scrutiny, then so to should all the other Luftwaffe aces in the 200+ bracket.

Is the goal to re-write the history books? Or to see who in fact was the highest scoring Luftwaffe ace? Surely not just a Hartman witch hunt.

It would be doing everyone a disservice if Barkhorn, Rall, Kittel, Nowotny, Batz, Rudorffer, Bar, Graf and other's claims were not also given the same intense analysis and match-up to Soviet losses.

Jim, the goal as I see it is simply to establish, as far as research can after 70+ years, what really happened. Isn't that what history is supposed to do? Yes, that should apply to everyone but you have to start somewhere. I'm confident that Hartmann and the others would still emerge as remarkably successful fighter pilots at the end of the process.

[HGabor]

Yep, that's all.

[GMichalski]

hi,
great work all

seems the second part of this thread: http://forum.12oclockhigh.net/showthread.php?t=1262

hope you find more,

Do you believe that there is another case like W A Bishop of 1ww
in the 2ww in claims vs losses?

i think it interesting also look pilots with many multiple claims also
with the +200s

regards

[Boris Ciglic]

From my experience I'd say that accuracy of the claims varied both from individual to individual, from unit to unit, and from local theatre to another. Luftwaffe fighters were highly accurate against Royal Yugoslav AF in April 1941 with just a few overclaims. When they returned to Yugoslav skies in late 1943 it was another story. IV./JG 27 was notorious with its claims and Bartels more than anybody else. II./JG 51 kept a very high standard of accuracy throughout 1944.

Boris

[Andrew Arthy]

Bronc,

I've seen mention of Lipfert's 27 'unconfirmed' victories. His tally of 203 official victory claims is complete up to 16 April 1945, so it is certainly not a case of him being denied credit for late-war claims, which I think is what you are suggesting. All the official victory claims he made that were accepted by his Staffelkapitän and Kommandeur and submitted for confirmation by higher authorities are part of his tally of 203 – there are no missing official claims. I assume the 27 ‘unconfirmed’ were made by him earlier in the war and were either a) not approved by his Staffelkapitän or Kommandeur (e.g. due to lack of witnesses), and thus never passed up the chain, or b) they were passed up the chain and then rejected by the OKL.

No doubt Hartmann had some similar unconfirmed claims. To quote two examples for which I have evidence easily to hand, both Wolfrum (two on 8 April 1944, one on 10 April 1944) and Broch (23 August 1944) claimed victories without witnesses, and these were unconfirmed victories. These victories without witnesses were still official claims and were submitted to higher headquarters, appearing in situation reports as “o.Z.” (ohne Zeuge), but the pilots did not add them to their individual tallies. I assume this is the case for at least some of Lipfert’s 27 unconfirmed.

My understanding of the situation is that the victory tallies floating around the Internet and elsewhere associated with various high-scoring Luftwaffe pilots were those claims they officially submitted up to 8 May 1945, which were approved at Staffel and Gruppe level, and were then passed on to the OKL for final confirmation. Victory claims officially submitted from November 1944 onwards did not receive final confirmation from the OKL because the process took several months (and sometimes years), and of course the war ended. The vast majority of victory claims submitted to the OKL were confirmed, so the tally of initial claims usually matched with the claims officially confirmed later by the OKL. Basically, if a German pilot claimed a victory and it was accepted by his Staffelkapitän and Gruppenkommandeur and passed up the chain, it would later be confirmed by the OKL.

Thus I have no problem if the officially submitted post-November 1944 Luftwaffe claims are accepted as part of a pilot’s tally. If the German administration had kept functioning, basically all of the post-November 1944 claims would have been confirmed in due course. Instead, they remain as claims made in good faith by pilots and approved at Staffel and Gruppe level (and accepted at Fliegerkorps/Luftflotte level). So they are certainly official claims, just not confirmed at the very highest level.

So in summary, Hartmann is credited with 352 because that is how many victories he submitted official claims for. This is the same criteria used for all the other well-known tallies. Hartmann has not been attributed with any 'unofficial' victories - his tally of 352 is based on the same criteria as Lipfert's tally of 203, Wolfrum’s of 137, etc.

While I'm at it, I should point out that the Germans did have categories for enemy aircraft probably destroyed and damaged, and also shared victories (although I’ve only ever seen a couple of these), but these categories were used much less by the Germans than they were by the Western Allies.

Hope the above makes sense.

Cheers,
Andrew A.