I'm curious as to what you think about Helmut Lipfert then. The vast majority of his claims have a corresponding loss. So why do you think that Lipfert's claims for example often have a corresponding loss but Hartmann's claims don't?
It's not just Lipfert that has claims with a corresponding loss by the way, many other pilots have claims backed up by losses on the other side, I just use Lipfert as an example.
Hartmann was not a superb shot. He himself acknowledged that. His way to make up for that was to get in very close and shoot when the enemy aircraft filled the sight ring. As a result, he went down from hitting debris several times. I'm sure you know this.
One result of his getting in very close was that Hartmann used very short bursts of fire to down his victims. If his first burst hit the engine and it quit, Hartmann didn't keep pouring in fire just because he had ammunition, he let the airplane go down. I'm decently sure that many of Hartmann's shoot-downs had minimal damage but were rendered non-operational. There are accounts of just that from his wingmen, so-stated on several occasions, with many more implied.
I have not done a lot of reading on Lipfert. Perhaps he was a good shot and his victims were much more often set on fire. I can't say. There are reason for everything and many are simply lost to time. We do not have the opportunity to interview Hartmann or his wingmen at this time. War doesn't follow the Normal or Binomial distribution for individual outcomes; only for general population trends.
You can make the assumption that there is something wrong with Hartmann because his victories don't follow the same statistical path as Lipfert.
That is what I call "armchair quarterbacking 80 years later," and I'm dead set against it. I wasn't there, to be sure, but you weren't, either. For you to sit back and say Hartmann was lying because his kills don't fit your pet statistical model is the height of what might pass for arrogance, but I won't claim that. Instead, I'll just say I won't participate in it.
Instead, show some proof that one of Hartmann's victims did NOT get shot from the fight when Hartmann claimed he was downed, at that particular day and time. It's a tough ask, I know, but you need some indisputable facts to impeach historic account that are long-accepted. Showing something didn't happen is reason enough to doubt it. Saying one Hartmann's victims didn't have a reported loss on some date just isn't in the same ballpark. I covered it above in earlier posts and will not rehash it again here.
I am a retired electrical engineer who was in on the first stages of the Six Sigma movement in the late 1980s. I lived statistics for about 10 years. Statistics works for general questions when dealing with large populations. Statistics won't tell you jack about individual outcomes. Statistics is NOT the tool to use for individual aerial victory validity.
Instead, you have to find some way to investigate individual victory claims. That is never easy because, incompletely and in no particular order:
1) Hartmann (or anyone else, for that matter) didn't know who he was shooting at. It was just an enemy aircraft.
2) That said, it would be very hard to identify what individuals to investigate on a given day and time.
3) Lack of a reported loss can happen for at least several reasons, including the fact that it may have been reported, but never made it to or got saved in archive, or the person using the archive may not have seen it yet, among many other reasons.
4) There are many ways an aircraft can be shot down and NOT be a total loss requiring a report of same. No sense in rehashing it again here. See above several places.
There are more, but this is getting long-winded.
Kudos to Luft.4 for the research. I look forward to reading about it.
But it'll take a lot more than statistical assessment for me to want to revise Hartmann's victory total. It'll take some reasonable doubt about an individual victory on a particular day, time, and location. Then maybe we can look at revising Hartmann's accomplishments as a combat pilot. Until then, I think not.
They tried to do the same thing with Pappy Boyington and they got virtually nowhere. Yes, his total got revised from 28 to 22, but there is an asterisk on the number 22. The asterisk means his total in US service was 22. He had another 6 with the AVG, which worked for CAMCO and the Chinese government. Never mind that the USA supplied the aircraft, the pilots, and the spare parts ... it wasn't in US service. So, Boyington still has 28 victories, but only 22 were in service to the USA.
You may find gaining acceptance for lowering Erich Hartmann's victory total to be just as difficult, not the least for the simple reason that the data about his individual victims will prove hard to find, if it exists at all.