Barkhorn: claims vs. victories

[Johannes]

Hi Franek

We known also all the date/time/place/type of Luftwaffe claims, these can obviously be compared to Allied losses. A.S.M claims seem to have survived for most of the war, these do give a pilots report of the combat, munitions used, height, direction of attack e.t.c, and the witness completes a separate report. Abschussemeldung papers seem to survive from the pilots only, and are much rarer, but with Barkhorn I think I have about 130 of these. Basically Barkhorn can be investigated until the end of 1944, and has been and the conclusion is that though sometimes mistaken, Barkhorn was honest.

Each nation had a different score procedure, the English added-up shared claims, the Italian's I believe, and as strange as it sounds shared in a claim i.e if a pilot shoots down an enemy ALL his staffel get the claim. But within the Luftwaffe they followed the Luftwaffe rules within JGr.Ital. But ALL nations over-claimed, ALL nations had basically liars.

But those exposed as over-claimers within the Luftwaffe all shared certain patterns in their claims, there are others being exceptional pilots who also had these patterns that were honest like Marseille, but these patterns are so profound that I cab pre-guess the dis-honest guys, and usually can associate them with certain comrades that helped each other, sometimes I just cannot see how they did it, but they did.

We have established through Russian losses that Maximilian Stotz was a little less than honest. With 4./JG54 and JG76 he would possibly have been in collusion with Hans Philipp, then he seems to have lost the opportunity for quite some time to over-claim, the Hans Hahn borrows him for a short while and both their claims are extraordinary in numbers, then Hahn is gone and Stotz goes to 6./JG54, shortly after he is in collusion with Reinhold Hoffmann, Stotz is lost and then Hoffmann is in collusion with Emil Lang, again they make extraordinary claims, claims that have been investigated by losses expert and proved to be largely over-claims, and sometimes just plain false claims, in fact Lang's "record day" would seem to have been planned, Lang had pre-chosen his wingmen according to Norbert Hannig, who I think was not involved in Lang's over-claiming, according to Hannig Lang set out to set the record!

Keep well

Johannes