Erich Hartmann's individual victories researched

[Christer Bergström]

It is very hard to piece together the German and Soviet combat reports on this day, since the times given do not corroborate to each other. Different Soviet sources give different times for the same events, and it seems as though several of the German victory claims give the wrong time and the wrong place.

In my preliminary manuscript to Black Cross/Red Star Vol. 5, this is my conclusion:

Two hours later, six Airacobras of 16 GIAP were returning from a combat mission when suddenly a Bf 109 struck down on them, shooting down Starshiy Leytenant Fadeyev and then making a quick escape. Fadeyev survived unhurt, but if we study 16 GIAP’s results for the day objectively, the results were quite negative: 41 Airacobras had flown combat sorties, and of these, three had been shot down and eight damaged. In exchange for this, only one German aircraft had in fact been shot down—hardly a convincing result for a crack unit.
It seems as though Fadeyev was shot down by either II./JG 3’s Leutnant Wolf Ettel or the Croatian pilot Leutnant Mato Dukovac of 15./JG 52, who both claimed an Airacobra in that area by that time.
Having claimed this victory, Wolf Ettel and his Schwarm returned to the battle zone, where they were bounced by four Airacobras and three Kittyhawks of 45 IAP who had been alerted by the Soviet vectoring station. But they evaded the attack and blew two of the former and one of the latter out of the sky. Having claimed his twentieth victory (unsubstantiated), Dmitriy Glinka had to take to the parachute and bailed out wounded. His wingman, Starshiy Serzhant Mikhail Petrov, suffered the same fate, and Starshiy Serzhant Venyamin Bezbabnov’s Kittyhawk fell in flames. Wolf Ettel returned from that engagement with his seventy-fourth and seventy-fifth victories, claimed against LaGG-3s, although a misidentification is not excluded.
Six LaGG-3s of 267 IAP (of 236 IAD) and seven Airacobras of 298 IAP also took part in that fight, with the former unit losing two planes—Starshiy Serzhant Mikhail Vakhnev bailed out of his stricken machine and Serzhant Nikolay Gorbachyov was killed—and Leytenant Georgiy Klimanov of 298 IAP force-landing his Airacobra at Novotitarovskaya airdrome. All in all, 236 IAD lost six LaGG-3s on this day.
Total losses by 5 VA on April 15, 1943 were at least six LaGG-3s and three I-153s. 4 VA had nineteen aircraft shot down. The Luftwaffe’s losses were confined to five aircraft—three He 111s and two Hs 129s—of which only two were shot down by Soviet fighters.

[Boris Ciglic]

Fadeyev was not shot down, his plane was only damaged. As I wrote, this piece of data came from Andrey Kuznetsov who for many years already is doing a in-depth research of the air battles over Kuban at TSAMO and went through the archival funds of all participating VVS units, from regiment to VA level. The data available online at Pamyat naroda, Podvig naroda and OBD Memorial, although occasionally very useful, is just a minor fragment of what is stored at TSAMO. A fine example is comparision of what there is on 5 VA in Hungary in 1944/45 and what is Gabor posting on this forum.


Cheers,
Boris

[Christer Bergström]

Yes, that was a sloppy writing. He force-landed at the airfield with a machine so badly damaged that it required reparations from a PARM mobile workshop. This is only the raw (unedited) manuscript.