Peter Duttmann 13,11.44 claims

[HGabor]

You are welcome. Soviet military documents at TsAMO (Central Military Archives of the Russian Federation in Podolsk, Russia) are the ultimate sources for the Eastern Front combat research. They have all of the loss reports (alias soviet 'MACR's) of downed planes, air unit diaries, mechanical-, maintenance logbooks, - everything. Combat diaries have serial number cross references for AC inventory reports, mechanical papers. No soviet plane-loss can be hidden or missed here at least for the later years of WWII, like 1944 or 1945. This is the ultimate test for the German and Axis fighter-claims. They can pass, or fail here. Hartmann, Düttmann and all of the others. Since I was not there, I cannot judge if they did, or did not hit their opponents in the air. Probably they did. But a large number of them was not a real loss/victory, - only damage. Afterall WWII was won/lost not in offices, in propaganda, or in statistics, but on the real frontlines. Certainly the soviet claims are also full of mistakes and overclaims. But not their loss reports! They knew what they had and what they had lost. Their documents were recorded at multiple levels of the military hierarchy with cross references, so planes could not just 'disappear' in there. I hope in the future more and more research will be available on the subject, which will change our view of WWII and the REAL achievements/results of the Axis-Allied fighter pilots and aces. So far the story was unfortunately way too one-sided, and the long claim-lists were treated as 'facts'.

Cheers,
Gabor