Erich Hartmann - how did his comrades regard him?

Kryten said:

I think I see where Ratsels 109 obsession comes from , I also play Il2 online, it's good fun but should be taken with a huge dose of salt as to flight models and especially damage modelling!

It's actually easier to ID a real plane than it is in the game due to pixelation, however, sitting in your house with a beer one side and a bag of crisps the other battling your mates creates zero fear or anxiety, I can easily see how a blue on blue could happen, whilst i was an aircraft recognition instructor in the army I had to mark numerous exams where people mistook such diverse aircraft as a Foxbat and a Tomcat, I can only sympathise with the guys who had to do it whilst flying an aircraft with not exactly brilliant visibility, holding station with your wingman, the gnawing anxiety of watching your tail and thats wthout G force throwing you about inside the plane!
I often am thankfull I was not one of that generation!

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To be fair, Simulations are how battle plans and tactics training are worked out in peacetime....how to react to a given situation. A simulation is only as good as the variables put into it, and the trouble is, there are so many 14 YOs brought up on the myths of german invincibility that if game designers tried to put in realism based on historical known constants, the game would be branded as "unrealistic" and would fail commercially.

Years ago, I had a friend who would participate every year in sand table exercises at Australias national wargaming conventions. Sort of similar to the US "Origins" expo held every four years or so (I think). Bit like the Olympics of wargaming. Basically you get points to "buy" your army. Combat rules were pretty realistic. All the young turks went for the classy armies...Israeli, US, West German that kind of thing. They had every imaginable piece of upmarket technology you could think of...MICVs, SPGs, Modern top class armour like Leopard IIs you name it.....at about company strength. My friend, a seasoned pro at this type of thing, "bought" a Royal Omani army, slightly older, less well equip0ped troops, riding around in Landrovers and Leopard Is. All the 14YOs laughed at him....until they realized that he could afford to "buy" a full regiment of this stuff, have some off board artillery support and nearly a full squadron of Jaguar FBs to support him.

Competition started, and army after army of these snotty little know it alls gets their butts kicked. The 14 YOs get cheesed off and start to pack up and leave. To save their competition, the organisers changed the rules mid competition and outlawed my friends Omanis from the competition. Thats the sort of mentality you are dealing with in the commercially available sim world, and I expect computer comps are just the same. Its a common and often occurring problem....dont let a few known realities get in the way of a good fantasy.

It doesnt happen when you are using simulation to train for a purpose within the military, which is where I learnt a lot of this stuff....you are looking for the most realistic and accurate representation that you can, so that you can test untried theories and ideas, without getting anyone killed. Places like Sandhurst, Duntroon and Wst Point use this stuff all the time

Maximowitz said:

For those interested there's some nice info and photos pertaining to Bartels over on the 12 O' Clock High Forum..

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yeah.. thats my thread for a personal matter.

Kryten said:

I think I see where Ratsels 109 obsession comes from , I also play Il2 online, it's good fun but should be taken with a huge dose of salt as to flight models and especially damage modelling!

It's actually easier to ID a real plane than it is in the game due to pixelation, however, sitting in your house with a beer one side and a bag of crisps the other battling your mates creates zero fear or anxiety, I can easily see how a blue on blue could happen, whilst i was an aircraft recognition instructor in the army I had to mark numerous exams where people mistook such diverse aircraft as a Foxbat and a Tomcat, I can only sympathise with the guys who had to do it whilst flying an aircraft with not exactly brilliant visibility, holding station with your wingman, the gnawing anxiety of watching your tail and thats wthout G force throwing you about inside the plane!
I often am thankfull I was not one of that generation!

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my monitor in almost the exact dimension as the foward armor windscreen on the real Bf109G. As far as anxiety for me anyways theres plenty. I'm like Hartmann.. never got shotdown by an enemy a/c. on a side note.. everything is set to realistic. and yes I know its not the same as the real thing.. or is it? never flew in 'real' combat. I think the next gen IL-2 needs multiscreen display capability.

parsifal,
good post.

IDing E/As was something practiced over and over again. they had playing cards with the pictures and specs of the E/As they would most likely encounter. they also had to know the ID for the K14 gunsite. IIRC, once they knew the plane they would select it on the gunsite then turn a dial until it fit into the circle..that would computer the range. all this was given you had that much time. but for all their practice, all their keen eyes they still misIDed a lot. i have read where mustangs from different SQs shot each other down. in the heat of battle and the speeds they were dealing with friendly fire was more than the occasional occurance. as for memories afterwards, during battle pilots would make their planes do bizzare maneuvers to get out of trouble or turn the attack on the LW. back at base a fellow SQ mate would ask ask them what they did to get their ac to maneuver like they did. very rarely could they answer. they had a target fixation and a lot became automatic and autonomic. the mind plays funny games in times of stress...hence the reason they put cameras in ac. it is hard to simply take their word for it. not that they are deliberately lying or embellishing it. but what they saw and what really was may have been 2 different things. Finnish ace Ilmari Juutilainen claims he shot down a couple P 51s during the soviet summer offensive. possible? very very remotely.

MH: Another unusual plane on your victory list is the North American P-51 Mustang of which the Soviets received only 10. Could you describe your two encounters with the Mustangs?

Juutilainen: The only time we saw Mustangs was during the peak of the Soviet summer offensive of 1944. The Mustangs we met were older models, with Allison engines. On June 26 we had just been escorting Bristol Blenheim bombers and were returning over the front line when I saw a Mustang approaching me from my right side in a right turn with his belly toward me. I yanked the throttle to idle to let it slide past me. The Mustang pilot, however, recovered his turn and then saw me. He also pulled his throttle back, and I saw long flames backfiring from his exhaust pipes. He also kicked his rudder to slow down, but I was doing the same thing, and because I had started sooner than he, the Mustang slid right out in front of me. The Mustang pilot then went to full power and tried to shake me off his tail with a climbing turn. In so doing he made his last mistake and flew directly in front of my gunsight. I fired, and soon the Mustang was burning in the forest near Tammisuo. Two days later my section was returning from a reconnaissance mission and made the usual detour to have an aerial engagement before returning to base. Soon we saw an Il-2 formation coming toward us escorted by three Mustangs. One of them pulled left and the other two went into a dive. In a tight diving turn I went after the airplane that had broken left, firing short bursts to break the pilot's mental backbone. It worked, for he apparently got nervous and went into a dive. The pilot kicked his rudder, but much too rapidly, only causing the tail to waggle while his plane stayed rather comfortably in the middle of my sight. The target was at an altitude of about 150 feet when it caught fire and crashed into the tall pine trees.

Interview: Ilmari Juutlainen

so who do you believe?

sadly with Pegs fotos on 12 o'clock we still can only guess as to what Gelbe 13 looked like the pic of number 13 he presented is a very well known shot NOT yellow sadly.

who do you believe you ask D ~ nobody it appears as sure the possibility is rather large when these pilots were interviewed post war some details do not change other change too much. In fact they can schange within a years time........."I did not say that! " oh yes you did I have the date and the interview time and .............. yes been there numerous times with veterans from both sides

Well we know with Mtt-Reg built G-10's the fuse Balkenkreuz was in the white outline only, the Hakenkreuz was black w/ white outline, the top wing Balkenkreuz was white outline only, wing bottom Balkenkreuz was black w/ white outline. We also know 'Marga' was in white German Script, and the '13' was in Yellow. We also know that the Gruppe IV machines carried the 3/4 wavy bar, in this case it would be Yellow. Colours always seem to be RLM 75,76, 82, at least for Mtt-Reg G-10's. Most JG 27 G-10 machines also used a white spiral on a black spinner. The WNr. is also on the top of the vert.fin right above the rudder hinge. More often then not, the division line between the top colours and fuse side is wavy.

But yes in General its speculation on what Bartels G-10 looked like, but an educated guess can be made. Also if one get see enough examples from a givin JG gruppe, then it brings one that much closer. Another thing, one can look at his past machines as a basis of comparison to see if any other added 'camo' was done. Bartels had his G-10 for quite a while before his death.

Erich said: "who do you believe you ask D ~ nobody it appears as sure the possibility is rather large when these pilots were interviewed post war ....."

Ya know E. the internet has done more to cast dispersions and chink more than one person's armor with suspicion. all due to the wealth of information that is accessable at lightening speed. but this also creates a new problem. people take the net as gospel. "I read somewhere on the web that...." its a cheap and unrelable form of research plain and simple. i am not saying its all bogus but that it needs to be taken not at face value. it IS a great framework to begin to dig further into specific topics to see if they hold up...if the creds of the poster or author are trustworty AND if or what has changed since then. authors back then were also hampered by the lack of this technology and availablity of information. they printed what they knew/believed at the time. so to answer your question....i dont believe anyone until i can dig through it myself...if i am even motivated to do so. i did some of those and found out what i needed...being #3 is good enough for me...lol.

no doubt wiki and it's associates is not high on your list ?

as I said cross-check, cross-check. for over 35 years we have accepted as fact anything as an example some of the noted LW aces for their kill claims as being bonafide fact. much has changed as you said with the advent of the net, we are closer to each other than probably what we would like but this is just all part of advancements in high tech.

wiki always with a grain of salt. Somebody with a masters degree can write it, then a borderline retard can edit it.. yup, thats wiki.

That can be said about a lot of information in the computer age. In the past if a person wanted to disemminate his ideas, he would either have to write a book with credible research to back his position, or at least write a paper that would be scrutinized by learned peers. This tended to generate a limited, but reliable body of published and unpublished work on a given subject. Even a schoolboys essay would be marked and assessed, so its relative worth as a pece of research could be at least indicated.

Nowadays, its open slather. People, can and do write anything, the tendency is to sensationalize if not tell outright porkies, to get their point across. I sincerely believe that there are people out there with an agenda other than seeking the truth. History is being re-written by the internet, based not on solid research or subject knowledge, but on sensational claims, outright lies and half truths. Anything can be "proven", because nothing has to be proved, just rpeated often enough.

I predict that in a short space of time we will be reading about how the holocaust is just an anti germanic propaganda stunt, about how the Luftwaffe won the war, but decided to hand back the conquered territories so that the EU could be established and how Adolf Hitler managed to escape to badlands of Bolivia, where he had five children and died in his sleep at 94, but has alrady been cloned and will be back.

Ratsel said:

yeah.. thats my thread for a personal matter.


my monitor in almost the exact dimension as the foward armor windscreen on the real Bf109G. As far as anxiety for me anyways theres plenty. I'm like Hartmann.. never got shotdown by an enemy a/c. on a side note.. everything is set to realistic. and yes I know its not the same as the real thing.. or is it? never flew in 'real' combat. I think the next gen IL-2 needs multiscreen display capability.

parsifal,
good post.

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if you have never been shot down your not playing against experienced players then?
its nothing like real flying Ratsel, I was a member of a glider club for years and even in a glider you are subjected to G-forces, you have no peripheral vision in the game, the flight models, especially the 109 in the updated versions are a bit of a farce, it floats round the sky like a baloon, the damage modelling is very poor, I have many times limped home with huge holes in both wings in a 109F and still been able to maneuver etc, its a game but you cant try and equate whats happening in the game to real flight the AI behave in a very predictable manner, human players are very difficult compared!
there is a multi screen capability now, but the best investment is a head tracker, even then , you have to realise the models have mostly been redone these days by enthusiasts to seem incapable of not "massaging" thier favourite planes flight model, its got to the point the FW190 is preffered as an opponent to the Me109 as the 109 is rediculously easy to fly!

but its only a game, good to learn the basics of stick and rudder mind you if you have the controllers available!

I raced circle track for several years, the last year with a in car video camera. When I play back the races I will notice a some of stuff that occured will be different than the way I remember it, and details that completely escaped my attention during the race. I'm not trying to compare the stress of racing to combat flying, but I do have knowledge of what real combat stress is like, I was a OH-6 crewchief in Vietnam. I've also played some video games.

With a real scary moment in combat being a 10, i've give circle track racing a 3 or 4, on the stress and adrenilin level, and video games a 1.

Under high stress you mind isn't going to take in many spare details, and it retains very little. It concentrates on the details needed for immediate survival, nothing else. Sometimes your imagination will fill in the details later, but you can't depend on it to be true.

interesting passage....

"Bf 109: The Operational History" by Jerry Scutts

"Many a Bf 109 pilot, intent on hauling his machine out of the hosepipe fire of eight Browning machine guns, watching out for his wingman and the enemy to avoid a collision, scanning the sky for the bombers he was supposed to be protecting and keeping an eye on fuel state; engine revolutions, temperature and so on, all at the same time, could be forgiven the finer recognition points of Hawker or Supermarine design!"

I'd love for a military style aero sim with as realistic handling as possible - even if it's much more difficult,easier to die, and of course the super computer to run it on - even if only flying with keyboard, stick n' pedals...

dunno what some of these guys are talking about.. but when I lose a elevator or aileron in IL-2.. good luck to me, I have a super difficult time flying. The AI planes have no problems with the same situation, they can adjust much much faster then me.

couple years ago I never flew a radio controlled airplane in my life.. bought the G5 simulator, tried that for a few months, went out bought a warbird RC and flew it like a pro. that experianced translated to 'real life' very well. that was just me though, others experiance may vary....

Kryten, I do fly with experienced players.. but I'm that much better then them.

Njaco, my pilot friend who flew Bodenplatte told me he just listen to the engine.. he rarely looked at the gauges, he had other things to worry about

PS I know a couple pilots who couldn't fly an RC aircraft to save their lives....

Flying a RC is still a quatum leap from flying a real aircraft.

Ratsel said:

dunno what some of these guys are talking about.. but when I lose a elevator or aileron in IL-2.. good luck to me, I have a super difficult time playing. The AI planes have no problems with the same situation, they can adjust much much faster then me.

couple years ago I never flew a radio controlled airplane in my life.. bought the G5 simulator, tried that for a few months, went out bought a warbird RC and flew it like a pro. that experianced translated to 'real life' very well. that was just me though, others experiance may vary....

Kryten, I do play with experienced players.. but I'm that much better then them.

Njaco, my pilot friend who flew Bodenplatte told me he just listen to the engine.. he rarely looked at the gauges, he had other things to worry about

PS I know a couple pilots who couldn't fly an RC aircraft to save their lives....

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Fixed...

parsifal said:

I predict that in a short space of time we will be reading about how the holocaust is just an anti germanic propaganda stunt, about how the Luftwaffe won the war, but decided to hand back the conquered territories so that the EU could be established and how Adolf Hitler managed to escape to badlands of Bolivia, where he had five children and died in his sleep at 94, but has alrady been cloned and will be back.

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Very good Michael, that made me laugh. You're probably right too.
The next BIG question is did the American's actually land on the moon in 1969?
Cheers
John

back on topic please ................ or is the thread done ?

well in searching.. which surprisingly didn't take to long, the one thing about USAAF docs. some I noticed is that they can never seem to agree on anything. So as far as those USAAF ones that I've seen go, I'll have to deem them as unreliable, and LW docs. reliable.

on 12 o'clock high there are some wonderful examples on how meticulous the LW pilots were on the details on there claim, as opposed to Allied docs. about the same.

what documents are you talking of when you state they do not agree as per US. would recommend for one the US Mustang claims encounter reports from :

Mustang Encounter Reports

a wealth of information not read quickly but to be absorbed and then cross-checked with other pilots of the same group for the same dated mission. I have used these reports for years in verifying JG 301 claims and losses in 44-45.

the web-site also has P-47 groups encounter reports from earlier eyars including the 56th's right into 44-45.