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

I doubt there is any debate as to claims being subject to error, so it stands to reason if you claim over 300 kills logically you will be subject to a greater factor of error, so the 345 or whatever is very probably out by a considerable margin!

And the Russians, former Soviets, have interest in corroborating Erich Hartmann's victories? They put him in prison for 10 years after the war for being successful. I doubt they's corroborate anything about a German pilot, and I'm not interested enough in researching just Erich hartmann to go to the expense of traveling to Moscow ... unless someone else wants to pay for it.

So 352 it is until verified as oterhwise with public sources. Thanks for the conclusion.

Interesting topic. I am pretty sure that every air force has more claims than actuals. It isn't a case of exaggeration, but in the heat of combat, one kill can result in multiple claims of that kill. If the pilot of plane x is concentrating his fight on an enemy and the pilot of plane y is also shooting at the same enemy, they may not see each other at all.

I am reading a book about the Flying Tigers right now that compares the losses of the Japanese units versus AVG kills and vice versa. On both sides, there were battles where each side shot down and/or destroyed more aircraft than were actually in the fight! Add an overzealous press to the formula and the numbers go higher. Even Chennault and some of the pilots of the AVG argue with press statements of the day.

Isn't this about "confirmed" kills rather than claims?

A pilot may claim to have shot down 5 aircraft, but with the evidence at hand his air force may only credit him with 1.

Wuzak,

Most of the air forces in question have already credited their pilots with kills, so the kill totals are known.

The issue seems, at least to me, to be that some people want to CHANGE the kill totals because they don't like whoever is number one for some reason. At this time, it happens to be Erich Hartmann who is credited with 352 victories. He had wingmen and detractors who flew with him and later stated they saw his claimed kills and had no more doubts ... but people seem to want to belive Russian detractors who have every reason to discredit Hartmann. They hated him and imprisoned him for being a fighter pilot who attained success.

I have no axe to grind ... the facts are the facts.

But to put Erich Hartmann under scrutiny while ignoring all the other pilots is ludicrous. If you want to dispute the kill credits in WWII, then examnine them ALL ... not just your pet project. I have never met Erich Hartmann (though I saw him live once), but have met Gunther Rall in a hanger in Scottsdale, Arizona along with Ralph Parr and a few other notables. They were a gregarious bunch, laughing and talking about wartime flying by describing their blunders ... not their kills. One got the disctinct impression that the kills were not a subject for discussion since that would lead admitting they were enemies or at least WRONG in their wartime purpose when, in fact, they were trying to be friends at the time. Rall described a landing in an Me 109 when he was distracted and hit a halftrack motorcycle tug while loooking at a visiting woman on the sidelines. He was embarrassed but said ne managed to get a date with her that evening, and he was more proud of that than his combat for the day!

I understand that thinking back on college and the women I dated ... I can recall ONE that was wonderful in all respects. Should have married her, I suppose ... wonder where she is NOW ...

All Ralph Parr wanted was another flight in an F-86.

GregP said:

Wuzak,

Most of the air forces in question have already credited their pilots with kills, so the kill totals are known.

The issue seems, at least to me, to be that some people want to CHANGE the kill totals because they don't like whoever is number one for some reason.

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The reaon is simply that there are many Hartman's claims for which there are not suitable VVS losses

GregP said:

At this time, it happens to be Erich Hartmann who is credited with 352 victories. He had wingmen and detractors who flew with him and later stated they saw his claimed kills and had no more doubts.

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Heh, first of all, no serious researcher, exept one Swede, has claimed taht vast majority of Hartmann's claims were unfoundered, secondly if you put someone who suspect person X is dishonest, to watch that person do you really think that person x, disregardless is he dishonest or not, would not be extra carefull during the time he is under surveilance by a doubter?

GregP said:

... but people seem to want to belive Russian detractors who have every reason to discredit Hartmann. They hated him and imprisoned him for being a fighter pilot who attained success.

I have no axe to grind ... the facts are the facts.

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From where you had got idea that for ex. Egorov hates Hartmann? IMHO you are basing your arguments on something else than facts.

GregP said:

But to put Erich Hartmann under scrutiny while ignoring all the other pilots is ludicrous.

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If you bothered to read my first message to that thread you would see that Hartmann really isn't the only one under scrutiny, and results varied, some had been very carefull claimers some others not. But nice to notice that you had nothing against the fact that Pattle overclaimed during the Greece campaign.

GregP said:

If you want to dispute the kill credits in WWII, then examnine them ALL ... not just your pet project.

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A bit tall order, I'd say. And as I have written, I'm not personally very interested in Hartmann's kill credits, I just answered Tomo's question.

Juha

I'm rereading the book Gotterdamnerung 1945, it's written using unit jounals and personal diaries of the units and people involved in the late war eastern front collaspe.

Various times the author will make the comment that different unit journals won't agree even when talking about the same event, even more so with personal diaries.
Officers were assigned to keep unit diaries or daily journals, but that would not be their only duty, ideally the would write the journal as events occured, or at the end of the day, but some times it may have been a day or days later, and days, numbers, and events may have got jumbled somewhat. It wasn't really anybodies intent to lie or hide the truth, there were just more important things going on at the time than keeping a record.

To Jim

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First no soviet union, not soviet archives does not exist anymore. Russian and Ukrainian archives are open to public since 1993. A lot of people from west went there in the meantime as Christer Bergstom, David Glantz, Emiliani and others that are perfectly qualified and clever enough to quote about their reliability. By all means for losses reports they were destinated to internal use only, not intended to be published one day, and were never destroyed or rewroten. Some of them may be lossed durinf 1941 chaos.

In other hand, during soviet aera were published optimistic numbers of the glorious industry of "peasents and workers". Optimistic with some overclaim i would say, as well as all soviet production numbers.

Once that said, it reminds to justify where did the planes, canons, tanks went.

AFAIK, a statistical analysis was made by a team during perestroïka leaded by the historian Krivosheïev.

So what do they say? But before Jim do you know what an ODB is, an inventory?

So from soviet ODB 32.1 thousands of planes were on line (20 thousands of them military) for the 22/06/41.

Do you have a reason not to thrust that. Only 21.9/12 military for the 1/1/42 due to losses.
And 64.2 (47.3) for the 10/05/45

Corroborated more or less by Alexeienko published lists by type of plane.

Considering western deliveries and local production, soviets recieved 138,5 thousand planes. It makes a resource except i'm wrong of 170,6 thousand planes?

So soviets had to justify a loss of 106,4 thousand planes for all kinds of reasons.
This think is done by Krivosheiev, 46.1 written off for combat reasons or due to dammages inflicted in combat mission. The others for accidents and usual wear and tear.

This is realy complete and exhaustive. Do you have something approched with same accuracy for RAF, USAF or Luftwaffe?

Now when the 106,400 list would be available, i don't know. But within few years a group of russian-ukrainian enthousiast had collected an anormous database of more than 40 000 events of accidents losses occured WW2 in 2003 (we are in 2012 now), that is used (against usd) by many of russian historians.

Nothing secret, only buisness, as the access in russian archives now, you need to corrupt a little...




.

To check a pilots claims by checking the opponents losses you need accurate DAILY accounts.

I can see that the Soviets would need to know how many they were losing to replace them, but just how often would they need to report this information ?

Pilots may not know exactly where they were when they shot down a aircraft, they often miss identify the aircraft, may put the wrong date on their logs, especially if the log isn't updated daily.

I know how things are supposed to be done in the military as to daily logs or unit journals, but I also know how things were done in the real world.

Altea said:

First no soviet union, not soviet archives does not exist anymore. Russian and Ukrainian archives are open to public since 1993. A lot of people from west went there in the meantime as Christer Bergstom, David Glantz, Emiliani and others that are perfectly qualified and clever enough to quote about their reliability. By all means for losses reports they were destinated to internal use only, not intended to be published one day, and were never destroyed or rewroten. Some of them may be lossed durinf 1941 chaos.

In other hand, during soviet aera were published optimistic numbers of the glorious industry of "peasents and workers". Optimistic with some overclaim i would say, as well as all soviet production numbers.

Once that said, it reminds to justify where did the planes, canons, tanks went.

AFAIK, a statistical analysis was made by a team during perestroïka leaded by the historian Krivosheïev.

So what do they say? But before Jim do you know what an ODB is, an inventory?

So from soviet ODB 32.1 thousands of planes were on line (20 thousands of them military) for the 22/06/41.

Do you have a reason not to thrust that. Only 21.9/12 military for the 1/1/42 due to losses.
And 64.2 (47.3) for the 10/05/45

Corroborated more or less by Alexeienko published lists by type of plane.

Considering western deliveries and local production, soviets recieved 138,5 thousand planes. It makes a resource except i'm wrong of 170,6 thousand planes?

So soviets had to justify a loss of 106,4 thousand planes for all kinds of reasons.
This think is done by Krivosheiev, 46.1 written off for combat reasons or due to dammages inflicted in combat mission. The others for accidents and usual wear and tear.

This is realy complete and exhaustive. Do you have something approched with same accuracy for RAF, USAF or Luftwaffe?

Now when the 106,400 list would be available, i don't know. But within few years a group of russian-ukrainian enthousiast had collected an anormous database of more than 40 000 events of accidents losses occured WW2 in 2003 (we are in 2012 now), that is used (against usd) by many of russian historians.

Nothing secret, only buisness, as the access in russian archives now, you need to corrupt a little...




.

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"

Mr Altea
You are providing interesting numbers. However I dont understand what proves that that numbers are reliable.All the gentlemen you mentioned worked on soviet era produced documents. And even if they are reliable their seperation as combat losses, accidents, and "general" wear is open to question
About the initial losses reports. I respect your opinion but i dont accept it. My country has a bitter experience about the communist methods of propaganda, and of consequenses on commanders " that failed to serve properly the people s army" . And they were recieving orders and methods directly from Moscow.
Now, writing from memory, german fighter pilots claimed 45000 kills and the flak units ~ 20000
Accepting the soviet opinion of about 46000 kills from all reasons, we can say : About 10000 to flak , about 10000 destroyed or abandoned on ground from/for varius reasons, add additional aircrafts that were written off after returning to base ( and thus not counting as a german air kill) , friendly fire, etc... So according to your data that leaves about 20000 or less kills for the fighters
You can accept these numbers if you want, i dont.
PS I know Bergstom , I have readen extensive pieces of his work. Finally i decided not to buy its books

I have already cited the Butch O Hare "ace in a day" episode where he was credited with five bombers shot down and recent records from the Japanese show only three bombers shot down in that engagement. Here is from Lundstrom, page 206, "The First Team" in the early part of the battle of The Coral Sea. The IJN actually had six fighters in their CAP during attacks on Shoho. The Lexington pilots reported engaging 10-12 fighters.. The Yorktown pilots noted the presence of six type 96 fighters and three "VSB' types. The "VSB" types were actually Zekes which they had never seen before. "Total American claims amounted to five fighters and one VSB to F4Fs, and five fighters and one VSB to the dive bombers. Actual Japanese losses were three fighters shot down." In addition, the analysts decided the American groups had sunk one carrier and one light cruiser with damage to one heavy cruiser. Actually one carrier was sunk but no light cruiser and no heavy cruiser was damaged.

The above is an example, repeated over and over again, of "the fog of war." Those pilots were more than likely not knowingly exaggerating their exploits but were just mistaken in their observations.
This forum is very Eurocentric in it's interests about WW2. While I have not had the opportunity to read books as well researched as Lundstom's or Shores's have been which show how inflated pilots claims and credits were in the PTO, I see no reason why the claims and credits of ETO pilots, whether Hartmann, Johnson or whoever are not as inaccurate as those pilots fighting in the Pacific.

tyrodtom said:

I'm rereading the book Gotterdamnerung 1945, it's written using unit jounals and personal diaries of the units and people involved in the late war eastern front collaspe.

Various times the author will make the comment that different unit journals won't agree even when talking about the same event, even more so with personal diaries.
Officers were assigned to keep unit diaries or daily journals, but that would not be their only duty, ideally the would write the journal as events occured, or at the end of the day, but some times it may have been a day or days later, and days, numbers, and events may have got jumbled somewhat. It wasn't really anybodies intent to lie or hide the truth, there were just more important things going on at the time than keeping a record.

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I have went through hundreds of company level war diaries. Yes, in army units that is a problem but in AFs not so much. AF units were based farther from the front and their ground echelons were much less in contact with enemy, so the clerical work was much more orderly.

Juha

tyrodtom said:

To check a pilots claims by checking the opponents losses you need accurate DAILY accounts.

I can see that the Soviets would need to know how many they were losing to replace them, but just how often would they need to report this information ?

Pilots may not know exactly where they were when they shot down a aircraft, they often miss identify the aircraft, may put the wrong date on their logs, especially if the log isn't updated daily.

I know how things are supposed to be done in the military as to daily logs or unit journals, but I also know how things were done in the real world.

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Hello tyrodtom
try to buy/loan Antipov's and Utkin's Dragons on Bird Wings The combat History of the 812 Fighter Air Regiment Vol. 1 (2006) so you can see from it thet VVS pilot log book looked much like that of RAF, LW or FiAF corresponding document, also VVS loss report and a translation of it in English, which shows that VVS was very interested in details of the losses etc. A an extr you will get excellent drawnings on Yak-1, -1b, -7, -7B, -9 and -9T, many colour profiles and some info on Soviet radars etc and of course the combat history of that regiment up to June 44.

Juha

Juha,

I'm not basing my arguments on other than facts, you are.

The Russians hated and imprisoned Erich hartmann ... not for war crimes, but for being a very successful fighter pilot. That is a fact, not my opinion.

Erich hartmann was creditied with 352 enemy aircraft shot down. That is a fact.

Some people in here claim Erich Hartmann didn't shoot down that many aircraft, and they have no document or documents that can be verified as being an official government document (or documents) from Germany, the Soviet Union, or anywhere else that says different. What we have is vague inendo about TsAIG documents that we cannot see and are taking the word of someone who alledgedly saw it and investigated all of Erich Hartmann's claims?

Please! If you did that much research, you'd HAVE THE DOCUMENTS, or copies of at LEAST the parts that support your claims, and could post at least some of what you found that verified your claims. Otherwise we have someone who wants to change the official WWII record by making noise about Erich Hartmann's supposed overclaiming on the internet. People lie on the internet every day and also on televisione every day.

Even if someone HAS a Soviet doeument that differs from Erich Hartmann's claims, which document is right? The Soviet loss record or the German claim? We all know that Stallin wanted to see fewer losses. He usually got what he wanted or people died. Who is to say whether the loss report of Erich Hartmann's claim is correct? A person trying to discredit Erich?

As I stated many times before, make your case with publically-available documents and facts or don't make it. If you do, settle in for a long investigation of the victory claims in WWII.

Until you do that, Erich has 352 victories and is the all-time number one Ace in world history, any other earwash or eyewash notwithstanding. If you want to be a revisionist, make your case with real, produceable documents or what you have is your opinion that is in conflict with the official records. In most reasonable people's minds, the official records can be changed, but only with proof. Otherwise the facts usually stand as recorded. In this case, I think the record is intact so far, and it has been 70 years. Finding anyone still alive who remembers the facts will prove increasingly difficult and it is likely Erich's record will stand forever, unless it becomes politically correct to revise it downward. Thankfully, we aren't that far gone yet, I hope.

GregP said:

Juha,

I'm not basing my arguments on other than facts, you are.

The Russians hated and imprisoned Erich hartmann... not for war crimes, but for being a very successful fighter pilot. That is a fact, not my opinion .

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Now some Russians probably hated him, but not all and yes, they imprisoned him as they imprisoned all successful LW aces they could lay their hands. What was different was that they kept him so long. Graf who did so co-ops with Soviets got out in 1949, most other 1947-49 IIRC, Hartmann amongst the last released German PoWs in 1955.

GregP said:

Erich hartmann was creditied with 352 enemy aircraft shot down. That is a fact.

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I don't know how many of his kills were officially confirmed by the normal confirmation system, which broken down around the end of 1944 but some sort claim allocation system seems to have been functioned to the begining of May 45. But generally status of all 45 LW victory claims is a bit hazy.

GregP said:

Some people in here claim Erich Hartmann didn't shoot down that many aircraft, and they have no document or documents that can be verified as being an official government document (or documents) from Germany, the Soviet Union, or anywhere else that says different. What we have is vague inendo about TsAIG documents that we cannot see and are taking the word of someone who alledgedly saw it and investigated all of Erich Hartmann's claims? .

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Now the Soviet/Russian Central Military Archives is TsAMO, TsAGI is Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute, a bit different thing. You can see TsAMO documents same way than you usually can see most other archival documents, by visiting archives in question. What is lacking as ar I know is the possibility to order and pay for copies of the documents via internet but that is fairly new service even in West. And IIRC it isn't possible even to use the older system to order microfilms via mail which was use in the west earlier

GregP said:

Please! If you did that much research, you'd HAVE THE DOCUMENTS, or copies of at LEAST the parts that support your claims, and could post at least some of what you found that verified your claims. Otherwise we have someone who wants to change the official WWII record by making noise about Erich Hartmann's supposed overclaiming on the internet. People lie on the internet every day and also on televisione every day.

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As I have wrote, I'm not researching the Southern Eastern Front, I have only noticed the conversations between researchers on that area. And at least a couple writers who had wrote books on Axis AFs seem to have high regard on Egorov and the couple Russian researchers with whom I have change messages on VVS vs FiAF have given impression of being very thorough and objective researchers.

GregP said:

Even if someone HAS a Soviet doeument that differs from Erich Hartmann's claims, which document is right? The Soviet loss record or the German claim? We all know that Stallin wanted to see fewer losses. He usually got what he wanted or people died. Who is to say whether the loss report of Erich Hartmann's claim is correct? A person trying to discredit Erich?

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Heh, you are sounding like Ratchel? when he claimed that USAAF documentation had to be in error because to the most of Bartel's Greece claims there were not suitable USAAF losses. VVS internal documents are like those of USAAF, essential to system to work. How system could allocate replacement if it did not know losses? Tell me. Remember those documets were internal armed forces docus, the numbers published during the war were a different thing.

GregP said:

As I stated many times before, make your case with publically-available documents and facts or don't make it. If you do, settle in for a long investigation of the victory claims in WWII.

Until you do that, Erich has 352 victories and is the all-time number one Ace in world history, any other earwash or eyewash notwithstanding. If you want to be a revisionist, make your case with real, produceable documents or what you have is your opinion that is in conflict with the official records. In most reasonable people's minds, the official records can be changed, but only with proof. Otherwise the facts usually stand as recorded. In this case, I think the record is intact so far, and it has been 70 years. Finding anyone still alive who remembers the facts will prove increasingly difficult and it is likely Erich's record will stand forever, unless it becomes politically correct to revise it downward. Thankfully, we aren't that far gone yet, I hope.

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Now some seem to believe, that even if we know that all others overclaimed and that Germans overclaimed in ETO and MTO, Germans didn't overclaim in the East, or what you are trying to say? Or are you claiming that that the overclaiming % was same to all aces, so further research would not change the order of aces? We know from ETO and MTO that that was not the case. As official records, I also believe that it better to left the records stand as they are, but as in for ex BoB, it's enormous improvement that today when talking on losses suffered then, we usually used real figures, not those contemporary official air victory figures, which were badly inflated on both sides.

Juha

Heh, you are sounding like Ratchel? when he claimed that USAAF documentation had to be in error because to the most of Bartel's Greece claims there were not suitable USAAF losses. VVS internal documents are like those of USAAF, essential to system to work. How system could allocate replacement if it did not know losses? Tell me. Remember those documets were internal armed forces docus, the numbers published during the war were a different thing.

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I don't know Juha. Its seems that you are hanging onto records from an unbiased, accurate, non-propaganda infected political system. If I was in charge of a country and my enemy was claiming that he was shooting down just about everything I threw at him, I might fudge the figures. Reminds me of a certain Press Minister at the start of the Iraq war...."The Americans are not in Iraq, the Americans are not in Baghdad, the Americans are surrendering..."

Njaco said:

I don't know Juha. Its seems that you are hanging onto records from an unbiased, accurate, non-propaganda infected political system. If I was in charge of a country and my enemy was claiming that he was shooting down just about everything I threw at him, I might fudge the figures. Reminds me of a certain Press Minister at the start of the Iraq war...."The Americans are not in Iraq, the Americans are not in Baghdad, the Americans are surrendering..."

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Now, as I wrote, what is in armed forces secret internal docus is altogether different what propaganda machine said. Same as the LW, even if I know there are at least some cases in which the reason of the loss is wrong, (for good operational reason LFl 5 lied sometimes and claimed that the planes in fact shot down by Soviets had suffered tecnical malfunctions), in general we believe LW documentation, even if we know that Göbbels' produced lot of bs, and we know that Nazi Germany was a bloody political system which killed millions of people of which hundreds of thousend were political opponents, and easily sacked generals who objected the military thinking of der Führer. Same goes to SU, its propaganda was one thing and docus another, we knew what SU claimed as its losses shortly after the Winter War against Finland but we also know that the real losses were much higher. Why? Because from 80s archives are opened and from there researchers, mostly Russians but also some Finns have found the real figures, which were much higher than claimed SU after the war and up to 80s.

Juha

Juha

Yes, I agree. Both sides had propaganda as a means of inflating the success of their regimes. Everything with a grain of salt. But until something concrete comes along, I persoanlly will stick with 352 for Hartmann.

overcredit is a real world thing, think that hartmann actually shoot down 352 aircraft is illogic.

Why?