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

[werner]

>the allied airmen had a much comfortable task to indentify german planes which they have met in combat .
fighters: most of the time 109 or 190 .<
>Yes, this is unclear moment. I, personally, found some cases when "Lagg" could turn to be Aircobra, Yak, or even ground assault Il-2... This is the problem with II/JG52 as well.<

look at all those 100s of He100 & 113 that are in various Allied claim lists.
misinterpretation was often very common in air combats on all sites when the pilots move with 500km/h and more and have to keep an eye also on the overall situation.

I think it is quite fair to say that there is an 25% error margin for each ace on all fronts. But also keep in mind that several German pilots had many never credited claims/victories especially in 1945.

It would be very interesting to see a statistic with losses / claims / etc unit-wise like the lists that John Alcorn presented about BoB in the magazine Aeroplane in 2000 while cross-checking with other sources.

[thenelm]

I have to agree with Ruy. Trying attach motive to 'overclaiming' to anyone long passed away is an exercise in futility. We'll never know. We're talking about combat in the air with multiple pilots attacking the same targets from every direction in that environment, while trying to seek your next target and trying to be sure an enemy wasn't about to blow you away from above, below, either side or whatever. You didn't stare your target into the ground. If you did, you died. And the bottom line is, EVERYBODY OVERCLAIMED, the Lw, the RAF, the US, the Japanese, the Russians or whomever I left out. Get over it - expecting everything to match up exactly or for an individual's claims to be perfection when said individual was also trying not to be someone else's victory is inane. All that stuff transcribed by Tony or in any publication are CLAIMS, the fact that some governing body accepted them has as much to do with propaganda for the folks back home as their validity.

[Rob Romero]

The following may be speculative, but I find Hartmann’s 11 Victories on 24 Aug 44 to have be conducted under suspicious circumstances. The Third Reich had suffered its worst setbacks on both fronts. After two months of hard fighting, the Normandy front had collapsed with the Allies seizing a sizeable bag in the Falaise Pocket. Furthermore the East front had seriously and rapidly contracted during Operation Bagration, initiated by the Soviets shortly after D-day in June. This little known campaign resulted in the virtual destruction of the most formidable assemblage of German military might–Army Group Center. (The extent of the loss of territory as well (as some the encircled remnants of Wehrmacht units) is illustrated here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BagrationMap2.jpg ). Let us not also forget the failed assassination attempt on Hitler!
A distraction seemed called for and –so what do you know- a PK unit appeared on the scene to record Hartmann’s 290th -301st victories –and this was all too conveniently wrapped up in one day possibly so everyone could get it over with; Nazi Germany now had a new ‘Babe Ruth Luftsiege King’ or -better yet- a ‘Bubi next door Uberhero’ to distract some from the harsh realities of a disastrous and unsalvageable war.

[Andreas Brekken]

Hi, all.

From time to time this issue 'spring to life' on this and other boards.

I like the approach Nikita has.

The discussion is however futile until ( if ever) it is possible to research the original documentation from all sides on a detailed level. The main reasons that this has not been done is two - a lot of RLM documentation on detailed level not selected for archiving and thus destroyed during the war, and the fact that availability to check in soviet records has been rather restricted.

We must also take into account that the regimes we are talking about are two of the largest propaganda machines of all time, .



Regards,
Andreas

[Juha]

Hello
not being Hartmann specialist I have no firm opinion of his claim accuracy, only that “Blond knight” would have been most appropriate material for Göbbels‘ propaganda machine. But more generally.

1) not all overclaimed, vast majority of pilots who claimed victories overclaimed but not all. And the extent of overclaiming varied greatly, even inside units. IMHO vast majority of overclaiming was made in good faith in the heat of high tempo very dangerous actions but on the other hand some had more realistic view of the effect of their actions than others. Just claiming that everybody overclaim we simply closed our eyes from realities of human nature and in fact advance boastfulness and do disservice to those who were careful in their claims and so were often more forgotten than some of their more boastful comrades. But I agree that we must be careful in our conclusions because it is very difficult to dig out the truth in many cases.

2) On the other hand. pilots being humans, IMHO there is no doubt that some because of glory seeking/career advancement/competition between pilots might well sometimes “forgot” to mention in their combat report that the plane they claimed was already clearly very badly damaged. A few even went to fraud for ex. the "Expertenschwarm" of 4./JG 27. The risk of being exposed was not very great and the official punishment not necessary harsh. We don’t know for sure why Sawallisch got killed in a/c accident shortly after their fraud was exposed but Bendert, besides being sent to train new pilots, which he might or might not got as a punishment, got his Ritterkreutz for his troubles. Harsh, isn’t it. But that goes to at least most of AFs, in all successes bought medal, career advancements, glory etc not only to the pilot but also to his unit and so also to its CO. So if the CO begun suspect that one of his “stars” was in fact overclaiming badly he might well try to solve the problem inside his unit and not report his suspicions to upper echelons.

3) Then there was the propaganda aspect. I have always been rather sceptical for “Bully” Lang’s world record on kills per day because it just happened to happen just before the day when one of the most humiliating defeat of WM happened and just in right place, namely in Kiev which Soviets retook/liberated almost without fight after Vatutin had completely outfoxed Mannstein. What a coincident, Göbbels could put on main pages the headline that a glorious LW pilot single handled shot down 18 “Red…..” planes and put somewhere else a small news that “by a brilliant tactical manoeuvre WM succeeded to disengage from Kiev”. I don’t doubt that Lang shot down a number of Soviet planes on that day but 18, timing is a bit too good for my liking. So I wasn’t surprised when Caldwell wrote in his JG 26 WD Vol 2 that while an excellent Kommandeur (of II/JG 26) he also had tendency to overclaim. So I’m not claiming that Lang was frauding his claims IMHO he was simply overclaiming but that when his 18 claims on 3 Nov 43 were accepted there might well being some propagandist element in it.

Juha

[yogybär]

Definitely, the mentioned 11 Hartmann claims were already "confirmed" by Propagandakomapnie and the GröFaZ himself. And looking at H.'s claimlist one can definitely say that he was not as heroic as many "Sturmovik- and Bomberkillers".

But who can judge on that? His advantage was: He survived.

Anyway, I would not say that the Bundeluftwaffe looked into Hartmann "frauding" or not, that was a different time then now, the whole democratic Germany was full of Ex-3rd-Reich people in high positions. They needed good people as well as "Aushängeschilder".

Overcaliming itself is definitely something personal (frauding also), as it also happens in todays world:
Some humans are selling themselves as "expensive" as they can, others do not want/need this. One more (very small) group even makes up some stories about their successes, but they are definitely a minority and I guess they were also back then.

==>
1) I think overclaiming is stronger in some pilots/persons then in others
2) I would not call them liars, but over-optimistic (also keep in mind their age: 90% = 20-25...)
3) I don't know what is the sense in identifying THE overclaimers in VVS, Lw, USAAF, ...
EDIT: Can anyone answer point 3 please?

[Nick Beale]

Originally Posted by yogybär

1) I think overclaiming is stronger in some pilots/persons then in others
2) I would not call them liars, but over-optimistic (also keep in mind their age: 90% = 20-25...)
3) I don't know what is the sense in identifying THE overclaimers in VVS, Lw, USAAF, ...
EDIT: Can anyone answer point 3 please?

1) Agreed.
2) Agreed but also they were people trying to make sense (in retrospect, full of adrenalin, amazed to still be alive) of a series of fleeting impressions. Our minds do try to put all these memory fragments together into a coherent story.
3) Only that historians try to establish what actually happened and a lot of the stories/reputations that became established do not stand up to examination. But frankly, if Hartmann only shot down 10% of his claims, he was still a highly successful fighter pilot.

There's also something about incentives to overclaim in different air forces' approaches to medals/promotions. Some may have made the problem worse.

P.S. A lot of my research makes me suspect that the Luftwaffe verification process wasn't always followed to the letter.

[Ruy Horta]

I see a lot of speculation, but hardly any foundation.

So certain that in response to defeat A, propaganda victory B was executed.

The simple fact that Nazi Germany thrived on propaganda means that all these claims must be seen in that light.

I disagree.

That doesn't mean that there is an element of wanting to create heroes, but there is a difference of intent. To what extend this wishful thinking differed from the other combattants, or was worse than the other combattants is arguable. Only the high claim numbers differ and that must be seen within a proper context.

There is a big difference between numbers fed to the public and those that are official. The Volkische Beobachter would have been the tool of propaganda, but not the regular claim's system.

Today we say that Marseille's claims are legit, but not long ago people like Johnny Johnson called it Nazi Propaganda. Marseille is not alone with having plus 100 claims that seem to be reasonably accurate.

In the east those figures seem to fall apart, but do we have access to all the Soviet figures?

We easily dismiss German claims, but also dismiss that not little part of the fighting was witnessed by friendly ground forces, since the Luftwaffe was playing fire fighter for most of the time in direct support of the troops.

So if the claim for type A isn't correct, we shouldn't dismiss that type D might have been shot up. That perhaps the damage to type D was reported a day later or whatever.

I find the claim that some of the Jagdwaffe claims to be directly related to some defeat to be pretty far fetched.

[FalkeEins]

Originally Posted by Nick Beale

1)
P.S. A lot of my research makes me suspect that the Luftwaffe verification process wasn't always followed to the letter.

good points .. and of course it wasn't followed at all from some time during January 1945, when Hartmann had, what, a 'mere' 280-odd vics....I blame Alfred Price - and the chapter on the validity of Jagdwaffe claims process in his old 'Luftwaffe handbook'. 'Claims' are basically worthless unless there is a corresponding loss.

But then on the other hand we can hardly blame Hartmann for all those fantasy artworks with the '352' rudder marking. It seems to me that much of the 'propaganda' occurred post-war ..at the height of the Cold War..

[drgondog]

Originally Posted by FalkeEins

good points .. and of course it wasn't followed at all from some time during January 1945, when Hartmann had, what, a 'mere' 280-odd vics....I blame Alfred Price - and the chapter on the validity of Jagdwaffe claims process in his old 'Luftwaffe handbook'. 'Claims' are basically worthless unless there is a corresponding loss.

But then on the other hand we can hardly blame Hartmann for all those fantasy artworks with the '352' rudder marking. It seems to me that much of the 'propaganda' occurred post-war ..at the height of the Cold War..

FalkeEins - on a slightly different tangent to this discussion, I have researched very thoroughly several battles from 8th Bomber and Fighter Commands perspective, and two that you may be interested in.

Contact me via PM to send me an email contact so that I can send you November 26 in particular - for the battle over Misburg.Erich contributed very strongly on JG301 attack and I put the JG1/JG6 part (still researching).

The focus was the 355th FG which was the sole escort for the 389th, 445th and 491st BG that day. The 361st was on a sweep to the Brunswick - Wittengen area and first encountered JG1/JG6 inbound from east-northeast. The 339th was to provide withdrawal support just east of Dummer Lake. From Gardelegen to Celle to Misburg to south of Misburg to south of Hannover from 1210 to 1245 only 40 Mustangs from the 355th and 7 from the 2SF, attached to 355th, were available to try to fight off the two German thrusts into Misbutg.

If the Tony Woods list is used as the primary source of Luftwaffe awards, then the ratio would be close to 2:1. If Reschke's narrative is used as a foundation for research, the overstatement of both the number of USAAF a/c destroyed, particularly Mustangs, as well as the number of US fighters that he encountered would be far overstated.

Regards,

Bill Marshall