Best Luftwaffe Ace

[tonyh]

It wouldn't kill you to verify the "victory" of your brother-in-arms would it? Next time he would do the same for you.

Perhaps, but how long would that last. Certainly not for hundreds of kills. And certainly not when a crash site cannot be found or someone disputes your claim. You'll have to try better than that.

tonyh wrote:

It also had to be varified by ground troops and if applicable by a crash site. The Luftwaffe were meticulous in these regards.

So were the soviets, if the german plane did not crash into the ground, but only went smoking over the horizon, the victory did not count because it was possible that the pilot could have landed on his own aerodrome.]

.....so whats your point?

tonyh wrote:

All claims were sifted through the Gruppen adjudant and endorsed by the Staffelführer or Gruppenkommandeur, then it was sent on to the RLM in Berlin, where it could get caught up in red tape for a long period. Finally the pilot recieved noticed whether his claim was filed as legitimate or not. It was far from a straight forward procedure.

So it was more like New York stock exchange.]

Perhaps.

tonyh wrote:

It does no military service to deliberately overclaim, in fact it does a dis service. As the records I've quoted above state the Luftwaffe actually underclaimed in the first six months of the war in the East. Your statemnt is simply not backed up by the historical record, certainly not in the first year of the air war in Russia. .

Now you are pulling away from the topic (whether intentionally or not I don't know). As far as I remember we were discussing overall performance of German versus Soviet air forces.
You are shifting towards the beginning of the war, why? The soviets did suffer tremendous losses to the air forces in the beginning of operation Barbarossa (most of the planes were bombed on the ground or crushed by tanks). Nobody denies that. That was the toll of a surprise attack. The whole infrastructure of Soviet Air forces in Ukraine and Belorussia was destroyed.
But the losses, no matter how huge they were, appeared to be recoverable, and it was proven by continuous fighting in the air even in the darkest days of the war against Germany.
So giving me 1941 figures is no good. The soviet planes were mostly obsolete.

I'm not "pulling" from anything at all. My comments are well within the boundries of this topic. If you wish you can narrow it down yto any stage of WWII, just say clearly which period you want to talk about. I post the statistics of claim/loss for the for 12 months of the Eastern air war to show you that the Luftwaffe were far from "extremely exagerrating" their claims.

Of course the losses were recoverable, I have never said otherwise. In fact I've stated it in other posts. Giving you the claim/loss statistics disproves your statement that the Luftwaffe "extremely exagerrated". I'll try to find the same statistics for the period of June 42 to May 45 and post them. Until then I would suggest to you taht you pick up the first two volumes of Black cross/Red star and the subsequent volumes for a comprehensive list of claims and losses from both sides.

When new planes such as Yak, Tu, Pe and Il appeared the Germans were struggling in the air

The Yak 1 was available in 1941 and was the only plane capable of dealing with the German 109's on an equal basis. Later versions of the Yak especially the Yak 3 and Yak 9 were superior to the 109G 6 and Fw190A 5. But who has said otherwise?
Also which version of the TU are you talking about? Most were twin engined attack planes which most definitely could NOT compete with a single engine German fighter. Neither could a Pe 2 or 3....As for an Il (I presume you mean IL2 or 4 or 10? These were also attack aircraft an not capable of tackling a single engined German fighter at all.

Tony

[ISU-152]

I really appreciate our discussion here Tony and I am sorry for calling you Nazi sympathizer in the other thread. No offense intended However, I am pressed for time and wish to discuss this topic tomorrow, Ok?

[tonyh]

No problem ISU, see you tomorrow.

And don't worry about the nazi thing. All the names are like water off a ducks back at this stage.

Tony

[Victor]

I'm not "pulling" from anything at all. My comments are well within the boundries of this topic. If you wish you can narrow it down yto any stage of WWII, just say clearly which period you want to talk about. I post the statistics of claim/loss for the for 12 months of the Eastern air war to show you that the Luftwaffe were far from "extremely exagerrating" their claims.

Tony, I already gave him the claim/losses statistics for both the Luftwaffe and VVS in the first year of war, as shown in BC/RS, in the thread about the USSAF and Raf against VVS thread. He just chose to ignore it. It does not fit his idea of "Luftwaffe hoolingans", who by the way never even managed to drop a bomb on Moscow.

As for what Axis pilots that faced both the VVS and USAAF thought, I can only say that the Romanian fighter pilots I talked to said that the Americans simply did not give them any chance. They were too many and had better fighters and knew how to profit from this. The Soviets were easier to fight. At least they had bigger chances to survive.

[Victor]

How do you like that?

I would like better to see how you actually prove that 300 of Hartmann's kills are fake.
Anyone can speculate.

[ISU-152]

How do you like that?

I would like better to see how you actually prove that 300 of Hartmann's kills are fake.
Anyone can speculate.

Women usually speculate on the flee market (and gypsies too). There is no evidence neither factual nor documented that Hartmann really shot that many planes. All his claims are his to prove (it is not my job) and my desbelief comes from the fact that WWII combat was indeed a difficult endeavor. The soviet loss record does not correspond with german victory record by some several thousand planes. My doubt has a footing.

[Qvist]

The soviet loss record does not correspond with german victory record by some several thousand planes. My doubt has a footing.

True. And after all, it would have been truly amazing if they had corresponeded exactly. But logically, you would then have a much larger problem with Soviet victory records, because the lack of correspondance between Soviet claims and German losses is from what I've seen much, much bigger.


cheers

[tonyh]

I have no problem with Hartmann's claims ISU, because his method was crude and extremely simple (which was drilled into him by Rosemann). His method was to always gain the height in the battle sight the target swoop and fire when he was very close. With these guidelines Hartmann couldn't fail to amass a huge kill tally. Also he only ever struck when the advantage was on his side. But until he started to employ the method that Rosemann taught him Hartmann found it very difficult to score. There was about 100 combat ops between kills 1 and 2 if I remember right. He amassed such a large kill count because 1. his method was simple and effective and 2. he was lucky enough to survive.

Unlike say litte Max Helmut Ostermann of JG54 who would hightail it off after Soviet aircraft and mix it with VVS pilots in turning battles as though he was flying a spitfire. It proved to be his undoing in the end however.

Finally I just cannot believe that Hartmann would be of the character to deliberately lie about his kill tally, to be honest. After all this was a man who CHOSE to stay behind with German refugees and wounded members of his Geschwader when he could have flown to safety in the West. For that gesture he paid with 10 years of his life in Soviet camp system.

Tony

[Victor]

Women usually speculate on the flee market (and gypsies too). There is no evidence neither factual nor documented that Hartmann really shot that many planes. All his claims are his to prove (it is not my job) and my desbelief comes from the fact that WWII combat was indeed a difficult endeavor. The soviet loss record does not correspond with german victory record by some several thousand planes. My doubt has a footing.

Actually you made a claim. Don't you think that butchering down Hartmann's record with 80% and justifying this only by the fact that the German claims do not exactly match Soviet losses is a little harsh? This kind of claim needs a more serious backing, IMO.

And btw, it is not Hartmann's job to prove his claims. He already did and were taken into account by an official victory confirming system. However flawed or subjective it may be, you are the one contradicting their claim and you should be the one to prove your point. They already did. It's logic.

Finally I just cannot believe that Hartmann would be of the character to deliberately lie about his kill tally, to be honest. After all this was a man who CHOSE to stay behind with German refugees and wounded members of his Geschwader when he could have flown to safety in the West. For that gesture he paid with 10 years of his life in Soviet camp system.

This kind of argument will have no effect on ISU. Those Luftwaffe hooligans can't actually be honest.

[tonyh]

Perhaps a final word is need on this claim/loss subject. Feel free to dispute with me if you think I'm wrong.

A pilot (from all airforces) is entitled to make a claim on an aircraft shot down in a given combat area. This claim is made for knocking an enemy aircraft out of the immediate battlezone, not for destroying or eliminating it from the enemy's OOB, which would be an unreasonable request for an airforce to make on a pilot.

Hence many of the victory claims made by pilots, in good faith I have to add, may well be just a heavilly damaged plane which manages to creep back home. However the claim is valid because the EA is no longer in the battle aone. Many a 109 managed to crawl back across their lines streaming smoke with a bullet in the radiator and was counted as a "kill". This claim is still valid, but the 109 would still be a flyable machine as soon as a new radiator is installed.

Therefore the claim/loss disparity of combatant Nations is not an accurate way of gauging the "truth" of pilots "kill" claims and one should be careful when looking at these statistics for such a result.

Tony

[Oleg Grigoryev]

here is something to think about during the ficht over Kuban VVS lost to all causes 750 planes. At the same time Luftwaffe calimed detsruction of 2280 Soviet palnes.

[Qvist]

here is something to think about during the ficht over Kuban VVS lost to all causes 750 planes. At the same time Luftwaffe calimed detsruction of 2280 Soviet palnes.

Compared to many other cases this would be a relatively modest overclaim - no more than 3 times too high. On the other hand, I have seen references to Luftwaffe claims that were actually too low.

BTW are you sure that the Luftwaffe claim and the Soviet figures relate to the same time period and geographical area?

cheers

[tonyh]

ISU has already quoted this overclaim, but as far as I can see it the exception rather than the rule. And it also doesn't suggest that that the claims were actually awarded to the claimants either.

I'd still like to know where this statistic came from.

Tony

[Miss Nimitz]

I wonder how Baron Von Richthoven would of faired if he was in the 2nd world war?

[Lord Styphon]

Baron von Richthofen WAS in the 2nd World War. In addition to his various commands, including the Condor Legion, he was also the youngest German field marshal.

Oh, wait, that was Baron Wolfram von Richthofen. You're talking about Baron Manfred von Richthofen.

If he was in World War II, Manfred would have had to have been a much better pilot than he was. His skill came almost solely from his marksmanship; he was a mediocre flyer.