Aces with 200+ victories: how do they stack up in 2012?

[Juha]

Hello Njaco
IMHO whether Hartmann really shot down 325 or 150 enemy a/c he was still one of the greatest fighter pilots ever lived. Only interesting thing in the question of the exact number of his kills is was he number one of all times in kills. Personally I doubt that, probably Barkhorn was number 1 with well over real 200 kills. But anyway say 100 WWII top aces in kills were all Germans. And in all AFs there were reliable claimers and those whose claims were less accurate.

Juha

 

[Jenisch]

Soviet archives...
Do you know whats the official position of the soviets about the Ordennes offensive ? Hudrends of thousands of americans throwing their weapons and running towards the sea, and the offensive stopped only because soviets attacks forced the germans to transfer their forces to the east ! This is the normal scale of history falsification on every book from the stalinist period that i posses.)

Post Stalinist line follows a similar fashion. This what I don't like from those people that claim the West minimized the participation from the Soviets during the Cold War. God, the Soviets did much worse with the West, and the Russians are treated like poor victims!

 

[Jabberwocky]

A US post-war study of German combat films (~700) and claims found a direct correlation between the rank of the claimant and the likelihood that the claim would be awarded as a kill.

Basically, the higher the rank, the greater proportion of claims that were awarded. What was interesting was that the claim/kill awards for higher ranks didn't necessarily line up with the amount of damage inflicted on the targets - primarily US four engine bombers - and the US assessment of what was most likely to result in a downed target.

While there may be some correlation between rank, pilot experience and skill and the overall likelihood of a kill, I'd suggest that the German claims system had a bias towards awarding kills to pilots with higher ranks.

 

[Njaco]

Bias was in the system. When a schwarm went onto the offense, the higher ranking pilot (usually the Schwarmfuerher) got first crack at the enemy while the less excperienced pilot covered his rear. It was the dynamics of the tactics at that time.

 

[Jabberwocky]

Bias was in the system. When a schwarm went onto the offense, the higher ranking pilot (usually the Schwarmfuerher) got first crack at the enemy while the less excperienced pilot covered his rear. It was the dynamics of the tactics at that time.

This is not bias in the combat tactics, but in the claim confirmation system.

I'll dig up the document and post the stats when I can find it.

 

[Njaco]

I only meant that while what you suggest may have happened, its also possible that the majority of claims also came from higher ranked pilots because of the way tactics were implemented. If I have 50 pilots making 2 or 3 claims while 10 pilots are making 100, its a good possibilty that a high perecntage of those high rank pilots will recieve the majority of kill awards.

 

[GregP]

Fastmongrel,

It's not the number, it's the fact that someone who wasn't there and is operating on what could easily prove to be incomplete data (or could be incomplete, but no way to prove or disprove it) wants to change it. Revisionists are everywhere, their research is very questionable, given the fact that the kills were awarded at the time by the people who were there and the revisionists (who weren't there) want to check claims against reported losses.

Their errant assumption, at least in my book, is that reported losses were accurate while reported claims were not. My contention is that if the claims were reported wrong, what makes you think losses also weren't reported wrong, too? Also, the reported losses may be incomplete ... unless you have ALL the reports of loss, your data are wrong. And how do you know you have them ALL? Nobody has ever answered that one, at least to me.

I simplty feel the awarded victories are the totals their contemporaries thought were correct, and that is a good enough yardstick.

As for the probability of an award being tied to rank, I think that in most cases, the higher rank was usually there longer, was a veteran, and his kills were very probably reported more correctly than some junior birdman fresh from pilot school who hadn't flown 10 missions yet. Experience tends to straighten out the problems, not increase them. if problems persist, the pilot doesn't survive to a ripe old age, and he MAY not even if he is a great one. He could be doing it right and still get killed. But doing it wrong for a long period of time seems unlikely for survival.

 

[Jabberwocky]

Ok, the data.

Not as comprehensive as I remembered unfortunately (only 170 claims analyses), but its been a few years and a few beers since I read the report.

Percent of Claims Allowed According to Rank of Pilot

Rank No. Cases % Claims Allowed

Lt.Col 6 100%
Maj + Capt 32 91%
1st.Lt + Lt. 66 50%
Sgts. 66 47%
Corp. 3 33%

It therefore appears that all German pilots who fired their guns in combat claimed the target to have been destroyed. The analysts granted 50% of all claims, but the percentage granted varied systematically with the rank of the pilot.

The result does not, of course, make the numerical data contained in the records any less valuable. It does raise interesting questions as to the state of mind of German Operations Analysts in 1944. it may be true that Lt. Cols. do shott down more bombers than corporals. On the other hand it is surprising that hits and fires in the target do not appear to affect the granting of claims. It will be shown later than both hits and fires are related to the conditions of the encounter

The few cases for 'Lt Cols' and corporals would discount them as statistically insignificant, but the other three rank classes would appear to be statistically significant.

 

[Tante Ju]

Lt. Col = Galland?

 

[Juha]

Thanks for sharing Jabberwocky
Very interesting. I knew that some younger LW fighter pilots felt that the system favoured higher ranking pilots, but because there are always "grumblers" I have not give much thought on that. On the other hand several top LW aces began their career as NCOs, for ex Bär and Schuck and some stayed NCOs through their careers like "Rudi" Müller, Rossmann and Marquardt. Also their claim accuracy seemed to have varied but some of those not the most reliable claimers served in JG 5, which seems to have been particularly optimistic in its claims, but it operated mostly in real wilderness and fought many combats over water, both of which were factors which in many AFs tended to increase overclaiming. So there seems to have been tendency to favour higher ranks in units serving in Defence of the Reich, because in neutral evaluation hits and fires in the target should have been the determining factor in granting of claims. But also at least in many units there seems to be good possibilities that also NCOs got their claims accepted. IIRC I have read from somewhere tat at lest in some units young NCOs had first difficulties to get their claims accepted but after they had established themselves in the eyes of their superiors, the problems disappeared.

In FiAF the 1., 4., 5. and 8. ranking aces were all NCOs and the 9. got most of his kills while being NCO. Also here there were/are rumours that higher hierarchy wanted a regular officer to be the number one and there seems to be some truth in that, the chosen one overclaimed rather badly. The irony is that it might well be that another regular officer in fact got highest number of kills in real world.

Juha

 

[Juha]

Lt. Col = Galland?

Now Galland wasn't the only Lt. Col serving in Reich Defence, in fact probability is that his films were not included in that survey, think on his career.

Juha

 

[Njaco]

Juha, who is "the chosen one"?

 

[GregP]

I see vague inuendo about Erich hartmann (aka the chosen one) but nothing substantiated. "There seems to be" doesn't cut it. Tell it like it is.

if you think he shot down less than he received credit for, which kills are you disputing specifically? All of his are dated and most also have the time. About 2/3 have the victim type. I have no quarrel with the truth, so be specific and tell us which of Hartmann's kills you think are bogus.

Also, if you knock down Hartmann successfully, you have a HUGE research project ahead of you to check the other guys, too, from all countries ... becasue if you manage to downgrade Hartmann's victories, I for one won;t take any heed until you also examine the rest for verification to the same standard. Selective scrutiny is not a good thing.

 

[Kryten]

claims are never going to stack up unless you saw every one of your opponents bail out, blow up or crash, the higher the altitude the less reliable the known outcome!

an aircraft seen going down smoking may well recover to a friendly strip, or may be attacked by another pilot, therefore doubling the loss claims, an aircraft seen diving away apprently unharmed may have a dead pilot at the controls, there are so many unknowns it becomes a minefield!

add to this the german system, where if five pilots attack an enemy aircraft, only one of them is credited for it's destruction, rank having it's priveliges, its easy to see the shared kill system of the allies being more realistic let alone fair!

kills may be an indicator as to a pilots abilities, but in reality there would have been pilots who shot down an enemy but never got home and would get no credit, it does'nt address tactical, numerical or airframe advantages or even pilot skill, knocking down a rookie with no combat and little flight experience is a very different proposition to dealing with an experienced opponent!

 

[renrich]

The overclaiming was not necessarily a pilot claiming something he or his wingman knew was untrue. Most overclaiming was just the result of the "fog of war." If one does not believe that the pilot or witness could not make a mistake and " claim" a kill that was not legitimate, I suggest you are not realistic. Air battles took place very quickly, often in seconds, not minutes. Visibility could be poor. Mutiple air craft could be involved. Following a target all the way to the ground and seeing him crash was the only sure way to know if a shoot down took place and even then someone else could have been the cause of the kill. In combat, I doubt if a veteran pilot often followed a prospect to see the crash. It only makes sense also that the most successful pilots would get more latitude when it came to claims. If you read Lundstrom's books where he researched both Japanese and US records the numbers of kills and the types shot down almost never matched up. Almost always the IJN pilots claimed more shoot downs than US records showed and the reverse was the case also.

 

[tomo pauk]

I see no problem with stuff being re-researched.
Many books, even the ones printed in 1990s, let alone in the 1960s, have many things flatly wrong. Eg. that Bf-109G was capable to make 620 km/h, or that Italians on battlefield were incompetent people lacking courage, or that French soldiers were cowards (despite dying in thousands), or that Soviets were using P-39s for tank busting, or that rockets were great vs. tanks, or that Sherman tank was good for nothing, or that V-1710 had no supercharger etc. It took plenty of research to debunk many of 'theories', and some of those still resurrect once in a while. So I'd say the new research is a great thing, either because it can reinforce something published before, or to debunk what was published. I can accept that it's easier to redo the technical-related stuff, than the man-related one (any observer can jump into a conclusion that a result of the new research is just throwing the mud at the man), but the said above still stands.

 

[Njaco]

I see far too many grey areas when it comes to trying to gauge how humans record events in history. Things sometimes aren't what they seem at the time and may - innocently - be recorded as such.

 

[Denniss]

Even the soviets had no doubt in Hartmann's victories - he was sent to prison for the 345 soviet aircraft he shot down.

 

[Kryten]

the soviets jailed him for being a Nazi fighter pilot, thats hardly conclusive evidence of claims!

 

[Marcel]

There is always doubt, especially with personal claims. From what I learned studying the exploids of Dutch pilots in war is that there is no way that pilots can really keep track of what is happening around them during a fight. They're human after all. Hence the overclaim from all parties during the war. That Hartman shot down many aircraft is beyond doubt. How many it really were? I would say that chances of 345 being the exact number is very slim. Might be less, might be more for whatever I know. This of course counts for all claims during the war. We'll have to live with the fact that we'll never know for sure how many were really shot down by a particular pilot. We'll just know that the number written down doesn't say much.