Barkhorn: claims vs. victories

[HGabor]

Hi Johannes,

Barkhorn's claims are very accurate and reliable, even the planes that he did not completely destroy, only damaged show up is soviet combat records. It is too bad that no further details are known about his January, 1945 claims where the soviet 5th and 17th VA loss records are all available. His analyzed 15 claims in the fall/winter of 1944 show a reliable pattern, were the final overclaims might have been related just to the poor winter visibility. His earlier claims in good visibility were pretty much right on. The approx. 60 planes that were not completely destroyed are simply calculated from the statistics, where -of course- a larger number might result a more accurate ratio. I can easily imagine that in case of a deeper analysis of not 15, but eg. 50, or more claims would result a much more accurate victory ratio with significantly less overclaims on his side. In order to properly analyze Barkhorn's further (or other Axis aces') claims we must know the details of the opponent soviet units' loss records, which at this point are available for only the soviet 5th and 17th Air Armies, supporting the 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts' ground forces in Hungary, Slovakia, Austria and partially in the Czech Republic. Aces, whose op. area fell out of this region cannot be analyzed in details yet. But research does not stop..

Gabor

[Johannes]

Hi Gabor

We agree that Barkhorn was honest then, perhaps some non-conforming with claims protocol when it comes to actual witnessing the crash, but as you say bad weather, and the Bf109 did have poor visibility itself. Also I would guess that Barkhorn like Hartmann and Rall claimed mostly fighter aircraft who's escape might have looked like death-dive.

Barkhorn was ambitious in his way, he thought his Schwerter an inferior decoration, as did Rall, both I think would have been awarded the Brillianten if it were not for Nowotny and Hartmann.

I maintain that with JG52 the most suspicious Gruppe was III, especially 9th then 7th staffel, and the least suspicious Gruppe was I. The more flugbücher I read the more I realize that more often than not they flew at Rotte, hardly ever as a full staffel. But also there had to be opportunity, even a dis-honest claimer needed opportunity, sometimes a pilot just fell in with a bad person, most often over-claiming by a pilot took place as one certain time in his career, then abruptly stops, good case for this is Emil Lang, reading Norbert Hannig's book Lang's record breaking day was planned-out, he had organised his wingmen that day for a series of sorties. In fact Lang's record breaking claiming spree was quite brief, then ends as abruptly as it started. With Maximilian Stotz it's the same, the opportunistic association with Hans Hahn in my opinion.

What is your opinion on Wilhlem Batz, he I think would be in your sphere of research, and his claims pattern highly suspicious, yet his earlier claims were very often not witnessed by a wingman, but by ground units, and he seems to have been flying alone for much of this period. I'll try to associate him with certain wingmen, but nothing is obvious to me by memory.

Take care

Johannes

[HGabor]

Hi Johannes, looks like unfortunately Wilhelm Batz (Stab III/JG 52) was not serving in the 2nd, or 3rd Ukrainian Front area in the late September, 1944 - May, 1945 timeframe, for which I have the soviet records.

Gabor

[Boris Ciglic]

Hi Johannes,


I will again use the data from "Drei Falken". From 63 claims made by Wilhelm Batz between November 1943 and early April 1944, only 9 can be confirmed in VVS records, he could have scored 8 or 9 more (unclear whether particular aircraft have been brought down by him or other pilots/flak), and the remaining 45-46 cannot be confirmed at all! Compared with other Luftwaffe aces which claimed 10 or more victories in that time frame over Krimea, Batz had the lowest percentage of confirmed kills. On other hand, Fonnekold had the best: out of 50, 31 are confirmed and 11 more are possible.



Boris

[Johannes]

Dear Gabor and Boris

I have checked Batz's claims against other pilots he flew with, and am surprised that I cannot say he had a system going with other pilots, a little bit of a match with Peter Düttmann, lesser with Otto Fonnekold and Walter Wolfrum, but as these were all high scorers anyway one would expect a little matching. But then again he become Kommandeur and from then on there are no matches with other pilots, again I believe that somehow Kommandeur can somehow self confirm there claims, or have a profound hold over their wingmen. Again if this proves to be true, only some abused their power.

So this is how it's done.

1. I scratch your back, like Rudorffer/Tangermann, Nowotny/Loos/Dobele i.e I'll confirm your if you confirm mine......actually now proved to have happened!

2. I scratch your back, for some other reward.......none proven, but likely, rank plays a part in this!

3. I am Kommandeur and can self witness(no evidence of this, but we can keep looking)

4. I am Kommandeur and you will witness(trouble with this is that post-war somebody would have blow the whistle.)

5. The whole Staffel or even Gruppe were scratching each others backs.....in my opinion this did happen with certain units over certain periods of time. But if you look your find certain Staffel grossly outperforming others of the same Geschwader/Gruppe under exactly the same circumstances like 6./JG5, 9./JG52 e.t.c.

Yet Heinrich Bartels of low rank took his bad habits from JG5 to JG27, a difficult one to explain.

Keep well

Johannes

[HGabor]

Thanks Johannes, just a side-note: I found Peter Düttmann's claims full of overclaims. (Found matching claims as well, but not many.)
Gabor

[Nick Hector]

Originally Posted by Johannes

Dear Gabor and Boris

I have checked Batz's claims against other pilots he flew with, and am surprised that I cannot say he had a system going with other pilots, a little bit of a match with Peter Düttmann, lesser with Otto Fonnekold and Walter Wolfrum, but as these were all high scorers anyway one would expect a little matching. But then again he become Kommandeur and from then on there are no matches with other pilots, again I believe that somehow Kommandeur can somehow self confirm there claims, or have a profound hold over their wingmen. Again if this proves to be true, only some abused their power.

So this is how it's done.

1. I scratch your back, like Rudorffer/Tangermann, Nowotny/Loos/Dobele i.e I'll confirm your if you confirm mine......actually now proved to have happened!

2. I scratch your back, for some other reward.......none proven, but likely, rank plays a part in this!

3. I am Kommandeur and can self witness(no evidence of this, but we can keep looking)

4. I am Kommandeur and you will witness(trouble with this is that post-war somebody would have blow the whistle.)

5. The whole Staffel or even Gruppe were scratching each others backs.....in my opinion this did happen with certain units over certain periods of time. But if you look your find certain Staffel grossly outperforming others of the same Geschwader/Gruppe under exactly the same circumstances like 6./JG5, 9./JG52 e.t.c.

Yet Heinrich Bartels of low rank took his bad habits from JG5 to JG27, a difficult one to explain.

Keep well

Johannes

Hi Johannes,
I cannot recall if I already brought this to your attention already, but this is an interesting link for the confirmation of aerial victories, by dint of sheer character reference. Google translate may come in handy for non-Russian speakers


https://warspot.ru/14209-kogda-dzhen...rbU0l7vQT4wCM0

[Johannes]

Hi Guys

Thanks for your responses and link. I was pondering the getting away with it issue, then checked Stotz's claims against those of his fellow conrads and found a few possible collusions, but nothing major, but thought about my theory about his Kommandeur Hans Hahn, and they absolutely match perfectly, basically Hahn borrowed Stotz as his wingman from 4./JG54. As mentioned before as soon as Hahn is gone then Stotz's claims pattern reverts back to unspectacular.

Anyway tried the same thing with Nowotny, and again absolutely matching with his former wingmen Dobele ans Schnorrer, Nowotny always claims two to Schnorrer's one, he just used his authority to borrow his former collusioners from 1./JG54. There seems to be no link with Rudolf Rademacher, who rarely flew with Nowotny....if at all, so another myth about the "Greatest Schwarm" broken, the fourth person was Gerhard Loos, until he was transfered to the West.

I will next try this with Hartmann and Batz and see how it looks. But looks like Kommandeur didn't/couldn't self witness, but could just fly with who they wanted!

Kind Regards

Johannes

[mars]

Originally Posted by Johannes

Hi Gabor

In fact Lang's record breaking claiming spree was quite brief, then ends as abruptly as it started. With Maximilian Stotz it's the same, the opportunistic association with Hans Hahn in my opinion.

Take care

Johannes

So Hans "Assi" Hahn was an overclaimer too ?

[Nick Hector]

Originally Posted by mars

So Hans "Assi" Hahn was an overclaimer too ?

Very much so.
You can use the Tony Wood lists to compare JG 2's claims to Fighter Command's losses (use the 1941 and 1942 Luftwaffe claims lists for the German victory claims, and the Fighter Command summaries to find the enemy losses. At the very least, the discrepancies in the numbers claimed versus the numbers actually lost will become obvious).
As for his service on the Russian Front, I refer you to Christer Bergstroem's recent Black Cross + Red Star 4, which gives good coverage of many of his victories and overclaims