Luftwaffe Pilots: Negative Record

mars · Post by **mars** » 12 Jun 2003 01:19

hi, Erich, how many fly hours did your cousins had before he was sent to the front, according to Adolf Galland, after 1944, German new pilots's average fly hours were about 40 before they were sent to front, was that true ?

tonyh · Post by **tonyh** » 12 Jun 2003 12:15

>>I bet his "real kills" would be around 250-280, still a very very impressive achivement through<<

Thats absolutely impossible to know. Nobody can state for sure what any pilot's kill number was.

Hartmann's "method" however allowed for a pretty good certainty of a kill. He always got in close before firing, thus insuring the kill. In fact several times his own machine suffere damage from the peices coming off of the E/A he was shooting at.

But as said, the RLM didn't just award a kill to a pilot for a laugh. Hartmann didn't just arive home and state he got a kill and was awarded it. The process applied to him too.

I reckon the Luftwaffe's very strict code of awards helped balance out the claims to a very good degree. In fact, in 1941, the Luftwaffe actually UNDERCLAIMED the Russian losses.

Tony

Juha Hujanen · Post by **Juha Hujanen** » 12 Jun 2003 14:08

Quite a few Luftwaffe experten were shot down/forced to land more than once.For example:

Anton Hackl (192 victories) was shot down 8 times.

Georg-Peter Eder (78 victories) was shot down 17 ! times.

Helmut Lipfert (203) was downed 15 times but was never injured.

Erich Rudorffer (222) was shot down 16 times,off which he jumped with paracute 9 times.

And they all survived war.I wonder which kind of lucky charm they carried

.

Cheers/Juha

tonyh · Post by **tonyh** » 12 Jun 2003 14:18

Maybe their cockpit's were full of rabbits feet.

Erich · Post by **Erich** » 12 Jun 2003 17:26

Mars, I am not really sure as I only have sketchs of his flugbuch so it is not complete. He was rushed from 9./Fliegerschule Rgt. 11 to 2./Jagdgruppe Süd and then to II./JG 301 in which he served in 5./JG 301 and flew Fw 190A-9 weiße 2. He must have been fairly good pilot as he flew as wingman to the 5th staffelkapitän, and incidently my cousin Unteroffizier Siegfried Baer and his staffelkapitän were both shot down in action and killed by Mustangs. My cousin south of Misburg buried at Friedhof Holtensen/Wülfinghausen and the Staffelkapitän, Oberleutnant Alfred Vollert was downed near Rethen, and buried at the familie gravesite at Hof.
JG 301 lost 37 Fw 190's this date and I have an additional 20 gravesite pics of I. and II. gruppe pilots most in the Friedhof Wünstorf. Very sad, as many of these boys had only a mere 25-30 hours flying time.
Proof once again of eager young lads wanting to serve their country but in the end becoming only casualties without scoring a victory.....

~E

Mark V · Post by **Mark V** » 12 Jun 2003 17:42

Well, in the last years of war Germans were not short of airplanes ***. They were short of competent flyers and fuel. It makes no difference how many time Hartman was shot down. He did bring home clearly positive end result and factories churned out new Bf-109Gs at huge pace.

*** OK - in the end they were also short of aircrafts, but that was because they didn't anymore had competent flyers - just rookies who were massacred on their first sortie.

Mark V

Erich · Post by **Erich** » 12 Jun 2003 18:28

well U may call them rookie pilots but there were plenty of replacements to serve. The major problem was lack of fuels and for the day and night fighter forces during the last months of the war many of the stafflen were shortened and removed altogether and only the top pilots were kept in 1/2 staffels. A/C were left abandoned during the retreat, with many of them in good condition where the Allies could have free reign to test fly these units. Luftwaffe personell were either sent to the front as ground troops......feld-dvisions or other armed services brances or were ordered to remove as much of the ground equipment and a/c as deemed acceptable. End result in april of 45 was to be sent home and hopefully not get captured....

~E

gabriel pagliarani · Post by **gabriel pagliarani** » 12 Jun 2003 23:29

oleg wrote:
Largo Caballero wrote:
gabriel pagliarani wrote:It is obvious that all aces were as much brave as lucky. How many times do you think a normal pilot could be shot down during WW2 having some chance to speak about this with his own nephews when retired? Reply: only 1. Therefore men like Hartmann, Bader, Galland, Sakai, Boyington were ACES because LUCKY MEN. The others were not less brave: they were dead.
I agree with you, but to rack up 352 kills, you've got to be doing something right.
claims -not kills. as far as I recall even authors of The Blond Knight of Germany in regrds to his true talley.
I personally found sorties/kill ratio far more interesting than the finall score allone.

There were also cases in which was better to hide victories (..or claims or attributions as correctly Oleg said..) to avoid counterattacks on civilians or ground attacks from partisans. ANR fighter groups were obliged to such "low profile". Strangely NATO adopted the same rule during air strikes on Bosnia and Serbia: a single Belgian F-16 shot down 5 enemies during a single dog-fight but Nato HQ immediately covered the identity of the ace.

gabriel pagliarani · Post by **gabriel pagliarani** » 12 Jun 2003 23:50

Erich wrote:well U may call them rookie pilots but there were plenty of replacements to serve. The major problem was lack of fuels and for the day and night fighter forces during the last months of the war many of the stafflen were shortened and removed altogether and only the top pilots were kept in 1/2 staffels. A/C were left abandoned during the retreat, with many of them in good condition where the Allies could have free reign to test fly these units. Luftwaffe personell were either sent to the front as ground troops......feld-dvisions or other armed services brances or were ordered to remove as much of the ground equipment and a/c as deemed acceptable. End result in april of 45 was to be sent home and hopefully not get captured....

~E

Surely an Axis rookie if surviving his 1st combat, at 3rd combat he had to be statistically deceased. But the few surviving till 10th flight had to be aces or deads. At the end of the war only 5% of Axis pilots were "aces", in the while allieds had more chance to survive. In my opinion Allieds had less "high scorers" and a wide lot of "2-5 claims" scorers more than Axis. The possibility to keep apart from 1st line after a service turnation saved the life of a lot of medium quality allied pilots. None of those was obliged to face the front-line continuosly till "last blood" as occurred to Germans, Finns, Rumanians, Italians, Hungarians, Croats, Japs. No replacement for Axis.

P.S.
Sorry, I have forgotten excellent Slovak pilots. Also those performed legendary war-actions.

Erich · Post by **Erich** » 13 Jun 2003 03:21

in additon once a Us fighter pilot could serve his duty with so many missions he was ruled out and went home. Not so with the Luftwaffe pilots as can be seen by some with over 500 missions. They flew till they were killed or maimed or went totally insane and suffered in accidents.

~E

gabriel pagliarani · Post by **gabriel pagliarani** » 14 Jun 2003 02:04

Wrote these figures on a previous post:

From "the 1st and the last" David Baker's Adolf Galland Biography 2nd issue (1988). Original in English by Windrow Green Ltd, Italian translation by Ermanno Albetrelli Editore 1998. ISBN-88-85909-90-6. Chapter XXI.
Translation from italian is mine. Sorry in advance for gaps laps and beans...
May 5th 1945 Americans found Galland wearing a complete high ranking General uniform of Luftwaffe but with the right leg of the uniform cut by cause of a plaster casting. Any other thing he had gained before has been brought away (..he was confined at home waiting an order of suicide directly from Adolf Hitler..) After 15 years of incredible efforts spent in the attempt to lift up Germany from the terrible sufferings eye-witnessed when he was a child, Galland had no reply to too many sacrifices done and seen. About 97000 men of Luftaffe were reported KIA, MIA, WIA and 20300 of those were Fighter pilots. These fighters pretended a very high prices from enemies: 70000 of 120000 foes shot down by Luftwaffe were shot down from fighters. Individual scores were incredible and surely not to be increased in any future; 2 pilots of those braves , Hartmann and Barkhorn shot down more than 300 enemies each; 13 pilots killed 200/300 enemies; 92 killed 100/200 enemies; totally 467 pilots killed more than 40 enemy each (..the best result for Allied..)These were the figures of Jagdwaffe. Galland had the honour to lead in combat this Elite: large part of them were normal german youngs without any political idea, but hopeful in their Country and their own possibilities. The fate of Jagdwaffe's pilots was to fly and fight till death: the difference with Angloamericans was in the reward for victories obtained. Their own reward was in being left to the front for struggle again, a premium ticket to death."

Notam:
obviously Galland never mentioned Gollob among "3 hundreds" because Gollob was the man AH choose as General der Jagdwaffe just after his own outgoing...a small vengeance for such a brave sodier!
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Another further technical explanation about lethal "shot downs". To be shot down at high ceiling is extremely more dangerous than a low ceilings. If you try to examine carefully flight profile, performance of the plane and kind of mission. A Stuka or a P-2 has a mission profile low on edge of trees, low speed, low kinetik energy. To be shot down at 30000 ft when the external temperature is -50°C, no oxygen and the time to reach the ground by chute could easily be more than 1 minute, jettisoned when the plane without any control could easily perform high Mach speed in my opinion is more dangerous. Therefore to be shot down while attacking a Fortress just under strato-pause was much more lethal than to be shot down from 2000ft and a linear speed a little more than an actual car, like Rudel's Stukakanone. But Rudel excelled also for his own determination: shot downed hundred kilometers behind enemy lines he returned back only by feet almost 3 times. Over Targul Frumos he lost a leg and only 3 days after he was back on duty at the cloche of his own Stukakanone.

Tolga Alkan · Post by **Tolga Alkan** » 18 Jun 2003 19:54

Juha Hujanen wrote:Quite a few Luftwaffe experten were shot down/forced to land more than once.For example:

Anton Hackl (192 victories) was shot down 8 times.

Georg-Peter Eder (78 victories) was shot down 17 ! times.

Helmut Lipfert (203) was downed 15 times but was never injured.

Erich Rudorffer (222) was shot down 16 times,off which he jumped with paracute 9 times.

And they all survived war.I wonder which kind of lucky charm they carried .

Cheers/Juha

I think they were the very lucky persons in the world history

Ti.P · Post by **Ti.P** » 20 Jun 2003 12:21

Germany did that alot, but the other countries did it too, i no average life expectancy at the end for a rookie pilot on either side was less then 2 weeks!

mars · Post by **mars** » 20 Jun 2003 14:59

Ti.P wrote:Germany did that alot, but the other countries did it too, i no average life expectancy at the end for a rookie pilot on either side was less then 2 weeks!

No, I do not think so, from 1943, an American Rookie was way more experience than a Germany rookie, and had way better chance to survie to become a vertarin.

tonyh · Post by **tonyh** » 20 Jun 2003 16:56

The sheer numbers the allies could put into the air, vastly increased a rookies chance to survive and lowered the German pilots chances in the same regard.

Many a US pilot flew their tour or more and never even saw a German aircraft.

Tony