German overclaims in the East. Hartmann and others...

[Gizmo]

Originally Posted by Nikita Egorov

Yes, I have heard something of this sort. It was Obleser, if I am not mistaken, who questioned Hartmann's tally...

From article by Christer Bergström :
http://www.elknet.pl/acestory/hartm/hartm1.htm

The sudden steep rise in "Bubi" Hartmann's success rate created suspicion among several other fighter pilots. One of them was Lt. Fritz Obleser, a twenty-year-old Austrian who had joined JG 52 a couple of months after Hartmann. Obleser also had achieved a large number of victories, and he found it hard to believe that another relative newcomer could rise to such level in such a short space of time. So Obleser asked the Gruppenkommandeur if he was allowed to fly a mission with Hartmann, and he received permission to do so. Hartmann and Obleser took off from Novo-Zaporozhye at 1200 hours on 1 October 1943. As they returned fifty-five minutes later, Obleser admitted that his earlier suspicions toward Hartmann had been unfounded; he had personally witnessed how Hartmann had blown two La-5s out of the sky in a matter of minutes.
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I have following infos about Experten claims
Walter Wolfrum - 177 claims including 40 reject (177/40)
Walter Schuck 236/30
Peter Duttmann 194/42
Johannes Wiese 208/75
Walter Nowotny 280/22

[Jens]

In my opinion it's quite clear that Hartmanns claims are several times too high.

Following indices (not prooves) speaks for this.

1.) From July 1943 up to the end of war, there were no longer eyewitnesses needed to confirm a kill. Instead of, the kills should be checked "after the war". But this is the time made most of his kills.

2.) Already in 1942 german Pilots like Graf and Dickfeld overclaimed several times.
some examples:
13.5.1942 Luftwaffe claimed 65 kills, of these 42 belonged to JG-52; but VVS lost in reality only 20 planes.
14.5.1942 claimes by III/JG-52 47 kills,
out of these were: Graf 6 kills; Grislawski 2 MiG-3; Dickfeld 9 kills.
Indeed VVS lost 14 planes; 5 Yak-1, 2 Il2-2; 4 LaGG-3 and some biplanes.

4.) Günther Rall fights at least one of Hartmanns claims, described in Tolliver/Constable.

5.) Hartmanns was highly interested to become a hero (not such a untypical behaviour for fighterpilots), which gave him also not a well reputation by his comrads.

6.) In accordance to 5.) Hartmann everytime has his best days, when he was "close" to the 200 or 300 kill border .

7.) In accordance to 6.), when Hartmann reached the 300th kill, he was awarded with the diamonds next day. No "long and strict confirmation procedure" was suddenly needed.

[Juha]

Hello again, Six Nifty .50s
I took a little time and checked a newer book, Kalevi Keskinen's and Kari Stenman's LeR 3. Suomen Ilmavoimien Historia 18. Loviisa 2001. ISBN 951-98751-1-5. LeR 3 was the Finnish AF fighter formation which fought over Karelia Isthmus in June 1944. One of the appendix in the book gives all the claims of the sqns belonging to the LeR 3 with the info of the victim's unit if the match is found from Russian documents. And they have found the match in 1:2.22 cases, if I counted right. I only checked timeframe 6.6. - 30.6.44. I don't know if the researcher, who has done the archivial research in Russian archives, has found more matches after the book went to print.

HTH
Juha