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

[Juha]

Hello Six Nifty .50s

I'm not aware anything in English by Hannu Valtonen.

Yes, in his Pohjoinen Ilmasota (1996) Hannu took rather dim view on claim accuracy on Eastern Front. On Your mentioned specific case, June 1944 over Karelia Istmus, he wrote (pp. 363 - 64) that the claim accuracy was 1:3 in the best case (if all those missing a/c of the 13th Air Army were shot down by fighters) and 1:4 if none of those the 13th Air Army reported missing were lost to fighters. Valtonen gives a couple of reservations to this calculations. He had no info on PVO losses, if any, and because he had no info on VVS KBF (Baltic Fleet's Naval AF) losses he estimated that it's losses were in the same ratio to number of a/c in use than those of 13th Air Army. Also some of the 13th Air Army losses may have occured over Baltic states.

Pohjoinen Ilmasota. Suomeen liittyvät sotatoimet syksystä 1944 kevääseen 1945. Keski-Suomen Ilmailumuseon julkaisuja 5. Jyväskylä 1996. ISBN 951-95688-4-0
HTH

Juha

[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

[Six Nifty .50s]

Originally Posted by Juha

Hello Six Nifty .50s

I'm not aware anything in English by Hannu Valtonen.

Yes, in his Pohjoinen Ilmasota (1996) Hannu took rather dim view on claim accuracy on Eastern Front. On Your mentioned specific case, June 1944 over Karelia Istmus, he wrote (pp. 363 - 64) that the claim accuracy was 1:3 in the best case (if all those missing a/c of the 13th Air Army were shot down by fighters) and 1:4 if none of those the 13th Air Army reported missing were lost to fighters. Valtonen gives a couple of reservations to this calculations. He had no info on PVO losses, if any, and because he had no info on VVS KBF (Baltic Fleet's Naval AF) losses he estimated that it's losses were in the same ratio to number of a/c in use than those of 13th Air Army. Also some of the 13th Air Army losses may have occured over Baltic states.

Pohjoinen Ilmasota. Suomeen liittyvät sotatoimet syksystä 1944 kevääseen 1945. Keski-Suomen Ilmailumuseon julkaisuja 5. Jyväskylä 1996. ISBN 951-95688-4-0

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 unit 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 1:2.23, if I counted right. 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

Thank you for the reference sources.

[Artist]

I feel all fighter pilots from all nations overclaim. It is hard to say, we where not there. In a large scale hot fight a couple good hits on an enemy plane you would probably call it a kill. Now a quick high G turn to check your own butt, now search out another enemy plane. Do it all over again. I dont think it is realy fare to question the integrity of these great warriors of any nation. As for claims of type, in the Pacific War just about every Japanese fighter shot down was called a Zeke. Lets be careful, to publicly question these men might stop them from answering our questions. I have written to a few German fighter pilots that had stopped talking about the war because of this type of thing. We may only have a few years left to get the story from them. I would rather trust their memories than somone who has never flown in combat and was not there.

[Dénes Bernád]

Originally Posted by Franek Grabowski

The question is if records of VA level are accurate enough. Personally I doubt it and would not draw any definite conclusions without checking documents of eg. AP level.

I would just sort all the claims as single and twin engined. It makes life much simplier.

I agree here with Franek.

Based on excerpts from the VVS' 5th Air Army documents I received, the amount of detail included in them is not enough for an accurate individual breakdown of victories and losses.

Also, the enemy airplane recognition skills of many Axis (and Allied, for that matter) pilots was rather questionable, so I would also stick to: single engine fighter/fighter bomber, twin engine bomber/reconnaissance, etc. categories.

Claims of historians that a certain pilot X who claimed Y number of Z type of aircraft and there was none of those lost that day in that area thus pilot X was lying is not scholarly enough (moreover, it gives a feeling that that particular author did not actually want to find a possible match for the researched pilot's claims)...

[Nikita Egorov]

Hi, Denes!

Originally Posted by Dénes Bernád

I agree here with Franek.

Based on excerpts from the VVS' 5th Air Army documents I received, the amount of detail included in them is not enough for an accurate individual breakdown of victories and losses.

Also, the enemy airplane recognition skills of many Axis (and Allied, for that matter) pilots was rather questionable, so I would also stick to: single engine fighter/fighter bomber, twin engine bomber/reconnaissance, etc. categories.

Claims of historians that a certain pilot X who claimed Y number of Z type of aircraft and there was none of those lost that day in that area thus pilot X was lying is not scholarly enough (moreover, it gives a feeling that that particular author did not actually want to find a possible match for the researched pilot's claims)...

I can partially agree with you. One, surely could not find out who shot down who basing only on 5 VA documents. But, I have notes almost through all levels of documents, starting from IAPs to VA. Comparing it with time, place and altitude in TW lists it is not so difficult to figure out at least which units participated in a particular combat. This method grows more complicated when it comes to match records during stiff battles as Kursk or some days of Kuban.

Regards.

[Kari Lumppio]

Hello!

Nikita, your comments prompted a question. Did VVS units keep war diary on the eskadrill level? As far as Finnish AF goes, the "juiciest" stories or comments can be found at the flight level (VVS eskadrill and Finnish lentue being more or less the same unit size). At higher level war diary entries are more general and dry.


Regards,
Kari

[Nikita Egorov]

Hi, Kari!

The main tactical unit in Soviet VVS was regiment, but not "escadrillya". However, there were some separate "escadrillias", the best document level one can find on the so called "regiment fund" in TsAMO. Unfortunatelly they are not always full. Our experience on fighters show that some 30-40% of IAP's funds are empty. So, the next step is "division fund" - documents of the division to which this regiment was subordinated during the war course. It mostly duplicate regimental operational documents. However, on the VA level all losses and victories are summerized, although not in the detailed form.

Regards,
Nikita.