Hartmann: claims vs. victories

[Franek Grabowski]

Originally Posted by FalkeEins

...Indeed. You've hit the nail on the head. Its becoming obvious that many of Hartmann's 'claims' were 'wishful thinking' at best. But everyone knows that he achieved '352' victories even today. Only ONE writer has come out and said 'no he probably didn't' - and he's been dismissed because he's Russian. Same thing with Rudel's 1500 tanks destroyed (or whatever..). These guys are 'heroes' - or had to become so during the Cold War because by then they were on our side..

I find it funny, that defence of Hartmann's score, when the same people are quite eager to claim that Allied fighters overclaimed heavilly.
That said, the scores of the WWII pilots should remain as they were officially credited. The verification against losses is just too prone to errors and not official, so it is more a historical information rather than a fact.
That said, we all suffer from the Cold War PR some of the German aces get. They neither deserve more glory nor attention than the Allied pilots, who saved the world from the tyranny.

Originally Posted by Nick Beale

And it would be easy to lose sight of the reality that even if he "only" got 70 or 100 that was a fantastic achievement in a war where most fighter pilots probably only ever scored something between zero and one.

Of course 70-100 victories is an achievement. Nonetheless, score is a result of opportunity, and do not say much about quality of a pilot. The large discrepancy between scores on ETO and MTO and against Soviet Union strongly suggests that this was a result of technical factor. Hence glorification seems out of place. Otherwise it would be interesting to compare scores during combats on isolated areas and on equal terms. I am afraid, however, that with the scarcy data it would not be possible. It is not only th problem of establishing exact circumstances of victory, but also finding f it was actually shared or not. Diferent critera make such comparisons unjust or rather false.