I suspect that he,and many others on both sides,would have kept his head down!
Flugbuchs were 'fudged' at the time as Erich says. Some have been blatantly altered or even forged since the war.
Steve
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I read all the posts and was left wondering if Hartmann would approve of the dissection of his career and pointless arguing over semantics.
John
John :
would any former WW 2 pilot of either nation ?
It's not to discredit the men themselves. It's an effort to establish what really happened. Noone is accusing any of these men of being dishonest (with a few proveable exceptions).
Claims are not a valid way of assessing losses. They weren't at the time and they certainly aren't now. There is an important distinction between the two which seems to be lost on some people.
Cheers
Steve
Agreed but, a true 'ace' is more than just a list of figures. There are qualities like leadership, charisma, being at the right place at the right time,luck, markmanship and most importantly being a gentleman.
I'll use Stanford Tuck as an example to illustrate my point without derailing the Hartmann thread.
Cheers
John
Milosh - where relative to Muhldorf/Waldkraiburg?
Thanks - that correlates roughly to two 355th pilots that went down - at least within 10-15 radius. The 357th FG pilot went down south of Landshut, east of Erding. The other 355th pilot went down west of Munich near Wessling Lake.
Waldkraiburg is ~62km almost due east of Munich and 69km nw of Salzburg. Landshut is ~42km Ebersberger Forst nnw of Waldkraiburg and ~61km ne of Munich. Erding is ~31km ne of Munich.(Google Earth)
Sorry for my brevity earlier - Ebersberger Forest relative to Waldkraiburg?
I'd agree with almost all of that. I'm not sure being a gentleman was obligatory if those other qualities were present.
I like to stick to known facts and figures which is why conjecture and words like 'cheating' are things I avoid. The Luftwaffe system,whilst rigorous,also,by its very nature encouraged 'optimistic' claiming.
I have my own opinion about the claiming of many of these men,on all sides,but it is just that ...opinion,unprovable either way and which I will keep to myself.
Cheers
Steve
there is NO discredit to the aces it is getting to the bottom of their claims within the units history, I am doing a day by day and very thorough re-do of JG 301's history and there are so many blanks that need to be filled. Surley this is a massive undertaking the JG 300 tome just did not take 5 years to accomplish but tons and years of research of course the French authors were able to procure personal first hand interviews of many former pilots of that Reich defenses wing before their passing, this is one of the huge stemming problems I and others face toady they are either gone or too tired to think and memory's have faded.
Bill please go ahead and start up a thread on the April 24, 44 mission maybe we can all chip in with info and get things correct or more confusedwell let's hope not.
I didn't see your reference to the forest being 20km east or I would have figured the math out.. lol