Erich Hartmann - how did his comrades regard him?

[parsifal]

I dont think any firm conclusions can be made about who was the most excessive in overclaiming. In 1940, Luftwaffe claims were 334% above actual losses, compared to 155% for the Allies. Conversely over Dieppe, Luftwaffe claims appear about right, until thactual breakdown of how Allied planes were lost is looked at. Same deals apply on the eastern Front....in the 6 months of 1941, VVS claims were about double what they should be, whilst at the same time LW claims against the VVS are about 3 to 5 times what they should be. These overclaiming figures are not for isolated incidents they represent overclaiming for an extended period. I dont think that any particular nation can be singled out for excessive overclaiming. A lot of it appears to relate to circumstance, and some to just poor reports. I think a lot of overclaiming extends from more than one plane or gunner claiming the same enemy aircraft.

Sensationalising results doesnt help much either, it just decreases the credibility of the claim. Too much hype is always a bad thing for sober assessment

 

[Ratsel]

I like you parsifal.. your a cool cucumber.. but if you will, could you please provide a response to post #178? many thanks. =)

 

[parsifal]

Thanks ratsel, Ive learned that the best way to talk to people is to put your argument, and then let them decide, rather than trying to make their minds up for them. Cant say i always live by that wisdom, but its what i aim for.

I cant respond too much to your Post 178. All i can say is that most accounts i have seen put allied losses at a somewhat lower number than the one you have arrived at....then again what you seem to be saying is that the knock on effects of the german attack....aircraft not shown as immediate losses in the allied tally sheets is entirely consistent with what i have been arguing, except that whereas I take the LW to task, your doing the same to the Allies.

My accounts other than the one I posted put Allied losses at a total of 470 a/c destroyed and or damaged, to about 280 LW, plus a further 80 or so moderately to heavily damaged. 143 LW aircrew were killed with a further 70 or so captured. They are the heaviest losses the LW suffered in any single operation I think, so if it is being argued that it was a kind of victory, its a pyrrhic victory

 

[tyrodtom]

So the Allies lost something they had very little problem replacing, aircraft. But very few pilots lost.

The Luftwaffe, however, lost something that they had in very short supply, and could not replace, pilots.

 

[Ratsel]

not entirely true. pilots they had. fuel to adequately train their pilots was lacking. however Experten pilots lost were ireplaceable. Bodenplatte was a classic example of what not to do.

 

[tyrodtom]

What could they do ?? They didn't have enough fuel to train new pilots, even safe airspace to train them in was getting hard to find. Not even enough fuel for operations. The experten pilots left had to be suffering from some degree of battle fatigue. Every rational thinking person had to know no miracle weapon was going to turn things around.

 

[Ratsel]

there was one Miracle weapon that would have saved Germany...... Operation Valkyrie

 

[stona]

They tried it in 1944 and it didn't work.
Steve

 

[Ratsel]

They tried it in 1944 and it didn't work.
Steve

yes your right. but it came very very close. some devine intervention dictated that Hitler should take his own life.

 

[stona]

It did come close and to be fair it was a somewhat modified "Valkyrie". It is one of history's great "what ifs?"
The course of human history turning on a table leg!
Cheers
Steve

 

[Gixxerman]

not entirely true. pilots they had. fuel to adequately train their pilots was lacking. however Experten pilots lost were ireplaceable. Bodenplatte was a classic example of what not to do.

Johannes Steinhof's book 'The Last Hours: The Luftwaffe plot against Goring' makes interesting reading on this very subject.
It talks a lot about the Galland idea of a 'big blow' (no gigling at the back!) made by the surviving remaining best pilots and bulked up by the schools output.
The experten to have the Me262s (which I was unaware had largely been going to bomber units and Goring held as a reserve for a strike that was never to come)

Mind you, as is also evident in the book the scale and speed of collapse was plainly shocking to all, even senior Luftwaffe people like Steinhof Galland.
Their idea that they could inflict losses so great as to cause the allied air assault to pause is fanciful, in my opinion at least.

You can see their POV but then they couldn't see the whole picture themselves, us having the benefit of hindsight all that.

there was one Miracle weapon that would have saved Germany...... Operation Valkyrie

You know I'm not so sure about this.
Whilst I can see it being a huge change whether it would have ended the war any more favourably for Germany I doubt.
From what I've seen the German conspirators ideas were to go back to Germany's pre Sept 1939 borders.
After what had been done to Russia I do not see that getting much support on the allied side.

In fact if that was the case then a Hitler-free Germany with its back to the wall facing an allied assault that insisted on their utter defeat might have led to an even more horrificly murderous final year of the war (or maybe slightly longer).

 

[stona]

It was only Britain and the U.S that had called for Germany's unconditional surrender at Casablanca in January 1943. Stalin didn't like the idea. Had the conspirators eliminated Hitler and the nazi leadership I think a negotiated settlement may have been possible,even in mid 1944. It would not have been on terms favourable to the new German leadership.
As I said above,one of history's great what ifs.
Cheers
Steve

 

[Ratsel]

agreed stona.

Gix, I wasn't talkin about Germany winning.. just saving what was left of Germany.

 

[Gixxerman]

Oh I know Ratsel, I was just throwing in my 2 pennies on that one (and I don't want to derail the debate, its just it came up).
Don't get me wrong, I know there is no right or wrong here really, just lots of speculation of varying interest.

I have read on a few occasions that what the conspirators hoped for was quite different to what those on the other side might have expected or hoped.
They had no intention of renouncing a lot of the 'Hitler gains' but rather merely hoped to end the hurt resulting from the war.
There's still an element of what Harris called the gambler wanting to walk away from the table pocketing gains at reduced cost.
But by July 1944 (particularly with Ultra Russian spies at that stage so effective) I'm not so sure they would have been allowed to walk away with so many gains and if that was the case then it is possible that the end might have been even more terrible than the awful experience it was.

As Steve says, a great 'what if' in its own right.

 

[parsifal]

I am very doubtful that the Allies of r the soviets would have accepted anything less than unconditional surrender from Germany, with or without Hitler after the casablanca conference. There is a disturbing tendency to underestimate the importance of these international agreements, yet they were critical to Allied victory, and were a tangible and fundamental difference to the way the Axis conducted their international relations. he Russians showed some inclination to negotiated settlement only whilst there was slight doubt as to whether they could win. The last time any sort of suggestion of peace occurred was in November 1943, from memory, but if the Stalin cummunique in raltion to that feeler is read i detail, it would still have required unconditional surrender of Germany. Afte Kursk, the Russians were convinced that they could not be stopped, and Russian war aims solidified to controlling all of eastern Europe. Moreover the division of Germany had been agreed to quite early between the allies and the soviets. Unless the germans accepted unconditional surrender, their country was headed for the scrap heap.

The glue that held the Anglo-American-Soviet alliance together during the war was the determination to defeat Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and Japan's military government reaching for control of east Asia. The Axis powers had provoked a conflict that would eventually take upward of 50 million lives and change the face of Europe and Asia for decades. At the same time, however, as Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt , and Joseph Stalin pulled together to win the war, they held discreet aims for their respective countries that were in conflict with each other, but the hitler phenomenon had virtually no relevance to those aims and the level of allied co-operation. Their skillful military and political leadership allowed the alliance to survive by temporarily muting their differences.

For Churchill and Great Britain, the goal was not only to defeat the Nazis but also to assure arrangements in postwar Europe that prevented Germany from attacking its neighbors again and provoking continental havoc as had occurred twice in the previous forty years and 3 times in the last 70 years. Churchill also believed it essential to reestablish Britain's worldwide empire, which had allowed the United Kingdom to prosper and stand as one of the world's handful of great powers.

For Stalin, the principal objective of the war was to eliminate German dominance of the continent and its capacity to invade Russia, as it had twice since 1914. This was a goal incompatible with an independant germany, and the presence or absence of Hitler or the nazis was irrelevant to the equation. German defeat promised to end the greatest threat to the Russians. To achieve his goals, Stalin aimed to establish socialist satellite governments across eastern Europe, especially in Poland, which had been a corridor through which German armies had invaded the Soviet Union. For Stalin, domination of the European continent was a possible prelude to creating Communist governments around the globe–across the Middle East and throughout Asia beginning with a socialist revolution and regime in China.

For the United States, the highest possible good that could result from the second Great War of the twentieth century was the destruction of totalitarian regimes in Germany, Italy, and Japan and the rise of democracy everywhere, as President Woodrow Wilson had promised during World War I. To Roosevelt, the United States' conversion from traditional isolationism to internationalism assured that American power and dominance of the world stage could be assured.

 

[Nikademus]

not entirely true. pilots they had. fuel to adequately train their pilots was lacking. however Experten pilots lost were ireplaceable. Bodenplatte was a classic example of what not to do.

According to Jay Cuttler, the Luftwaffe made it's errors with pilot training long before oil became an issue. Oil shortages only exaserbated an existing issue. It was similar for the Japanese.

 

[Ratsel]

According to Jay Cuttler, the Luftwaffe made it's errors with pilot training long before oil became an issue. Oil shortages only exaserbated an existing issue. It was similar for the Japanese.

perhaps. I'm not to familiar with pre-1944 Luftwaffe practices.. My studies are mostly Reichsluftverteidigung.

 

[stona]

According to Jay Cuttler, the Luftwaffe made it's errors with pilot training long before oil became an issue. Oil shortages only exaserbated an existing issue. It was similar for the Japanese.

Correct.
Have a look at "Luftwaffe 1933-45 :Strategy for Defeat" by Williamson Murray if you can find an affordable copy.
Problems with the training and supply of pilots goes back to 1939. There are plenty of complaints about the quality of replacement pilots after the Polish and French campaigns. These losses are often overlooked by a tendency to think that the first real air campaign was the BoB. At the start of these campaigns and again in 1941 the training of new pilots was virtually abandoned with the schools and training units shutting down. Pilots and instructors were seconded to combat units. Losing your flight instructors in combat and operational accidents is not a good way of ensuring consistency in the quality of future pilots. The Luftwaffe never really sorted this out.
The problem was definitely compounded late in the war by fuel and other shortages but was always organisational and ran much deeper than that.
Cheers
Steve

 

[parsifal]

Luftwaffe was also virtually forced to abandon advanced bomber flight training and blind flying after the losses to instructors (flying Ju52s) in the Stal;ingrad relief effort. Those that suvived were never returned to the flight schools.

These guys were even more important than the experten, but LW high command never saw it that way.

Another shortage was in the numbers of trainers....there were never enough.

Evidence that the Luftwaffe training elements were being overstretched can be seen in their accident rates for their training aircraft. Despite having a training element that was a fraction the size of the US elements in the US, they succeeded in having 2.5 times as many trainer write offs as the Americans. If we assume a training elment about 1/4 the size of the Americans (based on sortie rates for their training commands, compared to the training flights undertaken by the US), thats an accident rate roughly 10 times as great.

Based on the results they achieved, the Germans seemed to have the ability to produce a few very high quality pilots, like hartmann, and truckloads of chaff, like the countless thousands shot down in 1944.

Which is the superior model, training a few really high quality pilots that outshone everything about them, or producing a solidly based all round well trained cadre of pilots that in most situations were dependable, survivable and effective.

I know which air force Id prefer to fly for

 

[Ratsel]

I know which air force Id prefer to fly for

yep. me too. The Luftwaffe. Especially on the Western Front during late 1944 - 1945.

Based on the results they achieved, the Germans seemed to have the ability to produce a few very high quality pilots, like hartmann,

lots more then just a few high quality pilots my friend. lots more. names you don't always see in print.

and truckloads of chaff, like the countless thousands shot down in 1944.

just like the thousands of high quality allied aircraft/pilots that were shot down.