Erich Hartmann: verifiable claims

[Juha]

We should not forget other air forces, the writer(s) of the Wiki article on Pattle has/have tried to compare his claims to Axis losses, which is made easier by books like Shores, Cull, Malizia Air War for Yugoslavia, Greece and Crete: 1940–41, Shores, Massimello and Guest A History of the Mediterranean Air War, Håkan’s web site and Håkan’s and Ludovico’s books.

On the FiAF aces, I’d say that it seems that the claim accuracy of the “official” top aces varied greatly (from circa 75% downwards) and IIRC only some minor aces had claimed with 100% or nearly 100% accuracy. Another note is that of the FiAF aces the regular NCOs seems to be as a group the most accurate claimers (of course there were exceptions).


Juha