Hans Hahn/Maximilian Stotz

[@irnimal]

Originally Posted by Johannes

Hi Guys

we all known of the British "ace" Douglas Bader's claims, and lack of actual truthful victories. Post war he published a book about his "aceness" but it was proposed that a National hero should not pat tax for his efforts. Yet Stanford Tuck, and Johnny Johnson were honest British aces.

If the truth was known Günther Rall and Gerhard Barkhorn would be the top aces, with top medals, not merely other Schwerter winners.

Stotz I feel was led astray by Hahn, yet just as Stotz leaves the seen, another great "over-claimer" begins his run of unbelievable claims........Emil Lang, so somewhat endemic within the Staffel, but I do not believe all pilots even within this Staffel were doing such things.

These "super over-claimers" sure seemed to cause inflation when it came to medals.

Keep Well

Johannes

At the same time that Lang (and Rudorffer) were making spectacular claims, there were, in II/JG 54, guys like Albin Wolf and Hugo Broch that were very VERY accurate claimers.
Paulo

[@irnimal]

Originally Posted by Johannes

Spectacular pilots I can usually say who they worked it with, but unable to say with Hartmann or Batz, yet I am told it is so, and told so by dedicated researchers.

Kind Regards

Johannes

From what I've been able to find out till now on Hartmann is that while under Gruppen Kommamdeurs Hubertus von Bonin and then Guenther Rall, his claims were not that far fetched. Both of those Kommamdeurs were outstanding pilots and Leaders. Both of them quite accurate claimers (specially Rall).
But after scoring the 200th at the end of February 44, Hartmann is sent home, where he is decorated and has some time off the front. When he gets back to the Front, something changed. His claim's accuracy just goes down the drain. By that time Batz was the new Kommandeur. Don't know about his leader skills but hi claims accuracy was.......dubious.
Don't know if there was any kind of talk between Hartmann and the upper leadership, some kind of publicity stunt (by that time Germany was losing, so they were in need of Heroes to boost the morale), but one thing clearly stands out when looking at the Soviet Reports, Hartmann was overclaiming consistently.
But remember that those same files attest to the accuracy of other pilots.

Paulo

[Leo Etgen]

Hi guys

Very interesting discussion regarding the claim accuracy of the various pilots in World War II. I am very glad that some facts have emerged regarding the accuracy of various German aces on the Eastern Front which helps us determine which pilots appear to have generally been more accurate than others. I am interested in the facts as best can be determined and if these seem to show that a certain pilot overclaimed, for whatever reason, then so be it. As an interesting demonstration of how the picture changes when one reads an account that draws on the loss lists of both sides, I recently read F4U Corsair versus A6M Zero-sen by Claringbould. One has always read accounts of how the F4U dominated the various Japanese fighters in aerial combat to the point that it racked up an eleven to one kill to loss ratio ... This may very well have been true when confronting barely trained pilots fit only for Kamikaze missions but the results of the air battles between the Corsair and the Zeke in 1943 and early 1944 over the southwest Pacific were generally quite equal, about one to one. This was a very different result than the idea that is so prevalent due to reading sources that only quote American pilots' accounts and take these at face value.

Horrido!

Leo

[Kapper]

Paulo

I tend to agree with your comments.

Some time ago I wrote the following response to Johannes when discussing fraudulent claimants. I thought I had posted it on this website earlier, however I couldn’t find it, so maybe not. Anyway, the German system typically needed at least a wingman to verify claims for the claim to be awarded. Johannes had identified for some high scoring experten who regularly made multiple claims using the same wingman, thus open to collusion and fraudulent claim accusations (i.e. you help me with my claims and I’ll help you with yours). Johannes at the time had difficulty identifying a regular wingman for Hartman to collude with. I defended Hartmann as I believe he is an over-claimer, not a fraudulent claimer. The trends I highlighted below tend to also support your opinion.

“When most people look at the claims and see multiple days of 5 or more claims in a day, they say that the pilot must be making fraudulent claims. Personally, I think it’s a bit unfair to base a pilot’s credibility on the number of claims they make in a day. German fighter pilots, especially on the Eastern Front during the major battles like Kursk were required to fly 7, 8 or even more missions in a day. Unless you have their log-books, only an estimate can be made on how many claims for individual missions during a day were made, which I have based on the reported time of the claims and the following criteria:

1. Flying time for a Bf 109/Fw190 was about 90 minutes (being based close to the front and the rare use of drop tanks), and
2. Pilots were reluctant to engage in a second air battle after clear separation from the original air battle, due to potential ammunition and fuel shortage, thus tended to land and rearm.

Therefore, having the known times of claims, we can estimate missions where any claims around an hour or more apart would highly likely be from separate missions. For example, Johannes Weise (Stab I./JG 52) had 12 claims on 5 July 1943 (1st day of Kursk) which can be separated into 5 missions;

1. 3 claims (03.47, 03.55, 04.03)
2. 2 claims (07.51, 08.12)
3. 1 claim (09.40)
4. 1 claim (15.25)
5. 5 claims (18.30, 18.33, 18.40, 18.45, 18.50)

It is likely that he flew more scoreless missions that day, especially between the 09.40 claim and the 15.25 claim. Anyway, the most claiming missions that I can see on this basis is Walter Wolfrum who claimed 11 in 7 missions (1 [04.20], 1 [06.30], 2 [09.33, 09.47], 1 [11.17], 3 [14.09, 14.13, 14.20], 2 [16.07, 16.20], & 1 [18.07]) on 30 May 1944.

To me, a better measure of credibility is the number of claims in a mission. Several Allied pilots achieved 5 in a mission with less opportunity, so one could expect with the many opportunities German Pilots had, that many would be able to achieve 5+ in a mission and many did. Is it possible to claim 5 in a mission more than once - Marseille proved that this can be done in Africa. The first time he claimed 5+ in a mission (03.06.42 – claimed 6) from allied records that he got 5 and the 6th crash landed while returning to base. The second time (17.06.42- claimed 6) all claims were confirmed lost by allied records. So yes, it can be done. In all Marseille made 5 or more claims in a mission 5 times, but only the first 2 are fully supported by allied records (more on the others later).

So, what about achieving 5+ claims, 3, 4, or even 5 time in a career. The following are claimants that made 5+ claims in a mission, on 3 or more occasions that I was able to determine from available data – these can be broken into 3 groups as shown below.


Total / 5+ in a Day / Highest count in a day / 5+ in a mission / Highest count in a mission
JG54
Erich Rudorffer 224 13 14 13 13
Walter Nowotny 258 16 10 10 7
Emil Lang 173 7 18 7 9
Hans Philipp 206 10 9 6 6

JG 5
Theodore Weissenberger 208 13 7 10 7
Heinrich Ehrler 208 6 8 4 7
Walter Schuck 206 9 12 4 7
Jakob Norz 117 6 7 4 5
Franz Dorr 128 9 7 3 6

Other (Propaganda/Ego)
Erich Hartmann JG 52 352 19 11 5 6
Hans-Joachim Marseille JG 27 158 7 17 5 8

(Sorry about the format - cannot seem to insert a table)

This list contains the usual suspects when it comes to accused over-claimers and/or Fraud accusations. There is no surprise with the first 2 groups in consideration of the accusations regularly levelled at JG 5 and JG 54, of which much has been said and written. It’s the 3rd group that I wanted to highlight here.

Let’s first look at Marseille.

Marseilles achieved 5+ in a mission on 5 occasions.
03.06.42 (70-75) 1st mission 6 claims (12.22, 12.25, 12.27, 12.28, 12.29, 12.33) – 5 Allied aircraft lost + 1 crash landed on way back to base
17.06.42 (96.-104) 1st mission 6 claims (12.02, 12.03, 12.05, 12.08, 12.09, 12.12) – all 6 allied aircraft lost
01.09.42 (109.-116) 2nd mission 8 claims (10.55, 10.56, 10.58, 10.59, 11.01, 11.02, 11.03, 11.03) - supposedly all 8 allied aircraft lost but only 4 known to me
01.09.42 (117.-121) 3rd mission 5 claims (17.47, 17.48, 17.49, 17.50, 17.53) – Total 9 German claims for 6 Allied aircraft losses
15.09.42 (145.-151) 1st mission 7 claims (16.51, 16.53, 16.54, 16.57, 16.59, 17.01, 17.02) – Total 20 German claims for 6 Allied aircraft losses + 2 damaged

Note the times of Marseilles claims – generally 3 minutes or less between claims. Marseille had reportedly a very good shot and mastered the art of deflection shooting- after shooting down the first he would turn in the formation and shoot down the next – thus the short timeframes between claims. He was considered the yardstick for efficiency of claims. I remember reading that Galland commented on this, when referring to how few rounds of ammunition Marseille used for each claim.

By my count, mostly based on Christopher Shores work, Marseille first 100 claims in Africa were very accurate - 73 identified, +12 probable (more German claims than actual allied losses and cannot identify if Marseille directly responsible or not)) +7 that crash-landed and 8 unidentified of which 4 of these were in a combat over his base witnessed by everyone in 3./JG 27 on the ground on 15 June 1942 of which I have yet to identify the unit/victims – so basically of his first 100 claims in Africa only 2 are unknown. However, of his next 51 claims only 17 can be identified, a further 21 probable, 2 damaged and 11 unknown – he dropped from 85% accuracy (identified + probable) to less than 70% accuracy (identified + probable). Part of this was due to the bigger battles, but part of this was in my opinion, propaganda and ego – he was in the race for the top ace and no-one was going to question him and the propaganda machine wanted heroes – he fired at a plane, hit it and claimed it, no one was going to question him thus over-claiming. It’s Marseilles – they must have crashed. Particularly claims 145-151 – over-claimed badly to achieve a milestone (propaganda).

Though Hartmann claimed 5+ in a day an incredible 19 times, he claimed 5+ in a single mission on only 5 occasions and the most he claimed in a single mission is 6 – well short of the achievements of many of the multi-claimers listed earlier. These 5 times were:

26.02.44 195-199 2nd mission 5 claims (11.45, 11.48, 11.53, 11.58, 12.03)
04.06.44 246-250 2nd mission 5 claims (17.13, 17.23, 17.53, 18.15. 18.18)
23.08.44 286-290 2nd missions 5 claims (17.10, 17.12, 17.15, 17.17, 17.30)
24.08.44 291-296 1st mission 6 claims (13.15, 13.18, 13.19, 13.25, 13.27, 13.40)
24.08.44 297-301 2nd mission 5 claims (16.00, 16.03, 16.06, 16.10. 16.20)

The trend here is that he was going for 200, 250, and 300 –one can automatically see propaganda milestones but this can be a little bit deceiving.

Hartmann’s advantage was that he supposedly possessed fantastic eyesight that allowed him to spot the enemy first and be able to position for his favoured combat tactic of dive, attack, climb and dive again. This took time and many of Hartmann’s claims are 10+ minutes between claims - As I pointed out earlier, Marseille typically took up to 3 minutes between claims with his dive into combat and deflection shooting in the formation. So, anything between 4 and 9 minutes I gave the benefit of doubt to Hartmann – he may have hung around in combat or he may climb back and attacked. In Hartmann’s 1st 223 claims he claimed more than 3 in a mission only once – the first time he claimed 5. I think like Marseille these are genuine claims - being typically 5 minutes apart. Up until the 223rd claim Hartmann made multiple claims 3 minutes or less apart on only 7 occasions – including the occasion he was shot down while attacking the Il-2s (89th and 89th). Then, between claim 223 and 352 he achieved this feat 20 times - gradually increasing until the 20th -24th August (claims 275 – 302) where he claimed 5+ in a mission 3 times. The other 5 in a mission (to 250) is more like Hartmann (10 min, 20 min’s, 22 min’s, & 3 min’s between claims) so probably genuine and within Hartmann’s way of operation. Therefore, I suspect that this chase to 300 is major overclaiming - like Marseille’s chase to 150 (7 of 20 Luftwaffe claims for 6 losses + 2 damaged). As with Marseille, he shot at and hit an aircraft so it must be shot down!! The hierarchy wants their hero, so they likely will not even check the claims. “It’s Hartmann – they must have crashed”.

Having said all this, Hartmann rarely claimed more than 3 in a mission due to the limitation of flight time and his tactics – say 15 minutes to the front and return, and 10 minutes between claims – that is 50 minutes and he would need to have time to find his adversary, he would be in danger of running out of fuel – so 2 or 3 passes a mission – typically 2 or 3 claims - all reasonably believable to me. For the 322 claims in the claim microfilms Hartmann made the following:

1 claim in a mission - 109 times
2 claims in a mission - 61 times
3 claims in a mission - 19 times
4 claims in a mission - 2 (twice)
5 claims in a mission - 4 times
6 claims in a mission - 1 (once)

This is why I think it is difficult to find a partner in crime for fraudulent claims, as there is no real crime – just over-claiming. Hartmann’s success is that he flew a hell of a lot of missions and didn’t spend time on the side-lines wounded as did other experten. Marseille on the other hand was a master of deflection shooting, so he could get several victims in a single pass (proven against losses) – this is why I rate Marseille over Hartmann as the better fighter pilot.

As I stated earlier, I do believe Hartmann over-claimed – how much he over-claimed, I don’t know. His diving tactics would make it difficult to know for certain if his victim crashed. He dives, he hits an aircraft, and unless it explodes or the pilot bales out – how would he or his wingman determine that the aircraft actually crashed. Many Russian aircraft – like the Il-2 - could take a pounding before they would actually crashed. I believe that a portion of his claims were aircraft that either got back to base damaged or crash-landed in friendly territory and were later recovered – this last item also happened a lot in Africa, which made finding victims difficult at times.

I’ve been following the various threads on Hartmann and aside from use of false/out-dated information and badly researched articles, the number of claims identified to date is low. I find it a bit annoying when someone research’s a combat or short period of combat and finds that pilot “A” has claims that match the losses exactly thus that pilot must be an accurate claimer, without taking into consideration the rest of his career, while pilot “B” claims in a short time period do not match thus he must be fraudulent, all without looking at the whole of their careers and the situation they are in. For example, if you take Marseille’s claims of 15 June 1942 alone, Marseille must be very accurate (100%) but if you take his claims of 15 September 1942 alone, then Marseilles must be a fraud (30%)!!! It’s not an accurate depiction but it is what a lot of people have been doing. So, until I see a fully well researched work on the Eastern Front like Christopher Shores Mediterranean Air War series, I for one will not call him fraudulent. “

In addition to the above, I would also like to point out that in the back end of his career, Hartmann’s wingmen tended to be inexperienced novices. I doubt a beginner would stand up to contradict his leader and say that the aircraft was only damaged and that it didn’t crash. Add to that, a commanding officer who appears to be not so rigid on claim verification as you suggest – overclaiming would increase. So did Hartmann purposely make false claims? I don’t think so. Exaggerated yes, false no. Is this fraudulent, some may argue it is but many of us exaggerate, however for us mere mortals we are kept in check. I compare it to like a sports superstar. Many tend to become arrogant with their success and ego takes over. What happens if this is not kept in check by the relevant authorities!

Regards,

Craig…

[@irnimal]

Hi Craig,
Great overview you did. Well done. Agree with you all the way.
But talking about Hartmann it's like a taboo subject. I think that most of us got hooked on him when we read the bible ''The Blond Knight''. Like all those books written in the 60s, it is a comic book on words, to gev people hooked on a fantasy world of air combat, a thing that most of us probably longed to do. And they got what they wanted.
But in terms of real research.......
I, more or less, have been able to build a partial picture of how Hartmann's claims fair against Soviet losses during 42/43 (while looking for Rall's).
I say partial because I ran through most of the Loss Files (that I could find online) on the units involved in the fighting in his area of operations. To have a broader picture I still have to go through the Combat Reports, a thing that I still haven't had the time to do.
Hartmann was not a single mission multiple claimer. Like you said, he just was in the air all the time. Specially after the Battle of Kursk started. Rall was the same thing, always aloft. So their chances of bein able to claim were high. So, for that time period I am very inclined jo say that hi accuracy looks to be very very reasonable/good.
For 1944 onwards I still haven't had to the research myself, so I have to rely on the work made by others, specially for late 44.
For now just an example, 26 February 44 : overall 16 claims made by the Germans (14x Airacobra, a Il-2 and a Pe-2). Since Hartmann just claimed fighters, lets us stick to the 14 Airacobras claimed.
- [09h08~09h16] 2 claims (Hartmann - 2)
- [11h45~12h03] 8 claims (Hartmann - 5)
- [14h37~14h50] 5 claims (Hartmann - 3)
The only unit in the area operating P-39s was 205 IAD, and overall they lost 5 aircraft shotdown, 1 Mia and 1 CL (the pilot was OK and returned to unit).
Of these losses :
- [11h00~11h36sovtime] 1 shotdown, pilot b/out and returned to unit.
- [13h40~14h55sovtime] 3 losses (1 KIA, 1 Mia, bvt later pilot returned, 1 CL, pilot later returned)
- [16h15~17h15sovtime] 2 losses (1 Mia, pilot later retrned and 1 b/out, pilot returned)
- There was one more P-39 lost (Mia, pilot later returned) but no time given.
- from 203 IAD [153 GIAP] one Yak was lost (Mia, pilot later returned), to time available because still haven't been able to check Combat Report from that unit.
So, still a partial overall view but we can take some conclusions. Will leave that to everyone to do it individually.
And, Happy New Year to everyone.
Paulo

[Johannes]

Hi Guys

With regards to Hartmann the pattern of his claims would suggest he was "over-claiming" from 5th July 1943, judging by his claim times I would speculate if true that his "enablers" were Werner Puls and Güther Toll, later Hermann Wolf and Herbert Bachnick. But contrary to pass "200" his honesty dramatically dropping I cannot find an enabler, though his claiming certainly does become spectacular. With regards to Wilhelm Batz earlier on the name that sticks out as an enabler would be Heinrich Sturm, but at this earlier time Batz in my opinion was honest, I base this on the number of ground witnesses he had. Later two pilots claimed on a regular basis with Batz.......Wolfrum and Düttmann, Wolfrum's claims pattern does match that of an "over-claimer" whereas Düttmann's really doesn't, yet Russian loss experts state Düttmann was an "over-claimer", whereas I'm not sure that Wolfrum was. I also suspect that Hermann Wolf enabled Hermann Graf.....along with Heinrich Füllgrabe, Johann Kalb, Friedrich Brückmann and above all Leopold Steinbatz, I would wager the associated pilot Alfred Grislawski was not involved !

With Nowotny, there is the famous Schwarm i.e Nowotny himself, Anton Dobele, Rudolf Rademacher and Karl Schnorrer. Yet scrutinizing the claims I would exclude Rademacher from this Schwarm, and include Gerhard Loos.

When Kommandeur I./JG54 Schnorrer and dobele would be the enablers, but they were borrowed from 1./JG54.

With Emil Lang the enablers would be Alfred Gross and Reinhold Hoffmann, after his transfer to the west......Günter Zilling and Erwin Schleef, with JG26 I can find no connection, but his pattern would suggest it continued, but yet again he is a Kommandeur, there must be some way the ranking officers abused there power to self-certify......controversial I know, but perhaps between us all we can prove or dis-prove this one.

If the above is true, it would prove the honesty of other Kommandeur who had the opportunity to "self-certify" but certainly did not.

Also it looks like a dis-honest Kommandeur may mean a dis-honesty Gruppe, or it could just be his enablers.

Keep well

Johannes

[Nokose]

I did a thread on Hans Hahn’s Western victories claims on here. It was not really a reliable score.

[NickM]

Originally Posted by Leo Etgen

Hi guys

Very interesting discussion regarding the claim accuracy of the various pilots in World War II. I am very glad that some facts have emerged regarding the accuracy of various German aces on the Eastern Front which helps us determine which pilots appear to have generally been more accurate than others. I am interested in the facts as best can be determined and if these seem to show that a certain pilot overclaimed, for whatever reason, then so be it. As an interesting demonstration of how the picture changes when one reads an account that draws on the loss lists of both sides, I recently read F4U Corsair versus A6M Zero-sen by Claringbould. One has always read accounts of how the F4U dominated the various Japanese fighters in aerial combat to the point that it racked up an eleven to one kill to loss ratio ... This may very well have been true when confronting barely trained pilots fit only for Kamikaze missions but the results of the air battles between the Corsair and the Zeke in 1943 and early 1944 over the southwest Pacific were generally quite equal, about one to one. This was a very different result than the idea that is so prevalent due to reading sources that only quote American pilots' accounts and take these at face value.

Horrido!

Leo

Leo, I'm a huge fan of Claringbould, but I have not read THAT volume (though it sounds very interesting!); however I read the Unit History for VMF 214, by Gamble--I WAS surprised that, early on, they took pretty substantial losses in air to air combat (2000 hp Pratt and Whitney or not, more than a few pilots learned the hard way that a Zero could sometimes climb faster than an F4U). Now that Claringbould is turning his attention to include the air battles of the Solomons, I'm sure he's going to break everything down.

[NickM]

Originally Posted by Johannes

Hi Guys


With Emil Lang the enablers would be Alfred Gross and Reinhold Hoffmann, after his transfer to the west......Günter Zilling and Erwin Schleef, with JG26 I can find no connection, but his pattern would suggest it continued, .

Keep well

Johannes

Happy New Year, Johannes! I can only add what Caldwell commented on Lang in II/JG26---that, in spite of his 'overly enthusiastic' claiming, his vigorous, energetic and aggressive style of leadership, combined with the excellent staffel and schwarm leaders made sure II/JG256 remained an effective top scoring Gruppe in JG26 (and, I daresay, in the Western Theater).

[Johannes]

Hi Nick

I do not believe it was so easy to "over-claim" in the West, crash-sites were investigated, bit more difficult over Africa. JG 2 was far worse than JG 26, I assume because a lot of their claims were over water i.e no investigation possible. In the East they were usually made over enemy territory.

There is naturally opportunism, don't think that Hermann Graf would have had the opportunity to "over-claim" in the West.

I would suspect that most single claims by these "over-claimers" were genuine, just a feeling that they were unable(due to their company) to "over-claim", in fact when I jugged claims I was actually quite shocked that it was the same old wingmen involved in big mission claims, and when the leader makes a single claim, the same old didn't claim, I assume they were in "unknow" company.

Also looking through so many flugbücher is startling fact(in the east), very often these guys were flying as a pair, and that's not the Stab, in the East it was hardly ever a full Staffel event, usually two, three or four together !

Kind Regards

Johannes