Hartmann's Kills (1 Viewer)

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GregP

Major
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Jul 28, 2003
Chino, California, U.S.A.
Somebody recently posted a website that listed Hartmann's kills with some altitudes for most.

With the search function disabled it isn't easy to find it again, but I copied the data for his 352 awarded victories into Excel.

There were 319 altitudes recorded in his 352 kills and the average of all 319 is 2,608.37 m (8,557.6 ft).
The highest was 6,500 m (21,325.4 ft).
The lowest was 20 m (65.6 ft).

Of course, as was pointed out, this was on the Russian Front, not in western Europe. Just thought I'd post it since I was interested and thought somebody else might be, too.
 
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Actually wasn't saying anyt6hing. Just noting that we have altitude data for 319 of Hartmann's 352 kills and the numbers. Some people don't know how to separate out numbers from text in Excel and I was just passing on wht I found out about the max, average, and min altitudes of his victories.

I have no other agenda, and also do not think it is necessariy an important datum ... just pasiing on the number in case anyone is interested.
 
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Information is always important, one never knows when just that little bit will make the difference.
Thanks for posting this info.
 
Any time.

I have a LOT of data, but no way to post an Excel file. Many are too big to post anyway.

Actually I'm working on posting my information with the Planes of Fame Museum in Chino. We have started the project and will likely have the databse in FileMaker Pro in the future.
 
Here's the data for Barkhorn: 1,104 Mission, 301 Victories. 3.67 missions per victory.

Type Number
Yak-1 76
LaGG-3 37
LaGG 25
LaGG-5 25
P-39 21
Il-2 20
Yak-9 17
Il-2 m.H. 13
Yak-7 13
I-16 8
P-40 8
Pe-2 6
Hurricane 5
DB-3 3
I-153 3
I-18 3
MiG-1 3
R-5 3
Yak-3 3
Boston 2
La-5 2
Spitfire 2
Boston III 1
I-61 1
Yak-4 1
Grand Total 301


Here's Rall's data: 621 combat mission (don't know "mission," just "combat missions." 275 victories. 2.26 missions / victory. Don't have a breakout for Rall. Am just getting started on breakouts.

I DO have a file on German claims about 68,000 lines long, but am still working on the file. It is claims, not vetted confirmed awards. Am not even sure if there IS a list of vetted confirmed German awards.

Sorry, don't have any data on Priller other than the obvious. Josef Priller flew 1,307 combat missions to claim 101 victories. All his victories were recorded over the Western Front, and consisted of 11 USAAF heavy bombers, 68 Spitfires (the highest Luftwaffe ace's tally for these aircraft), 11 Hurricanes, 5 medium bombers, and 5 USAAF fighters.
 
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I seem to remember reading - probably in one of Caldwell's books - that the RAF was able to confirm every single one of Priller's awarded kills.
 
He certainly had the Spitfire's number. It was probably some flying trait of the RAF that he noticed and nobody else did. You generally fight like you train, so there must have been some central trait of either the pilots or the Spitfires that Priller noticed and capatalized on.

At least I'd THINK so. Maybe he was just lucky with Spitfires, but he did it long enough for luck to be an unlikely predominant factor. Maybe he was just a better combat flier with a lot more experience, but the RAF weren't exactly slouches for the most part.

It is VERY unlikely that he somehow found the less-talented pilots for THAT many victories.
 
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He certainly had the Spitfire's number. It was probably some flying trait of the RAF that he noticed and nobody else did. You generally fight like you train, so there must have been some central trait of either the pilots or the Spitfires that Priller noticed and capatalized on.

At least I'd THINK so. Maybe he was just lucky with Spitfires, but he did it long enough for luck to be an unlikely predominant factor. Maybe he was just a better combat flier with a lot more experience, but the RAF weren't exactly slouches for the most part.

It is VERY unlikely that he somehow found the less-talented pilots for THAT many victories.
I agree, he must have had a certain "knack" for Spitfires. 68 of them to be exact. The very idea that he fought from the beginning, to the last 4 months of the war as a front line fighter pilot on the western front, is amazing. A most impressive amount of time. Granted, most of his time at a rank and position where he was flying every day presented Spitfires as the main opponent. (He got 15 hurricanes as well.) This being said, when his job was Reich defense, he knocked down 11 four engine U.S. bombers, as well as 5 fighters. So, there is that.
 
When your main opponent is the RAF whose primary fighter is the Spitfire, one would think most of claims would be Spitfires. Iirc Galland claimed 55 Spitfires or ~53% of his claims.
 
Could be Milosh.

But after the Battle of Britain I thought the primary German focus was on shooting down the bombers that were attacking them. And Spitfires weren't used all that often as escorts ... so somehow, this gyt managed to come across the relatively short-ranged Spitfires on a damned regular basis. I'd love to see something like some average for bomber kills versus fighters kills for some of the Luftwaffe aces ... but that would be asking a lot given the state of the data from Germany.
 
Fighter sorties vs Germany. Jan 1943 to May 1945.
Army Air Forces in World War II
569,097 Total.
283,902 Escort.
167,028 Bombing and strafing (i.e. CAS). 29% of total.
18,216 Recon.
99,951 Other.

A lot of CAS sorties on the western front. Add light and medium bomber sorties and you have a lot more aerial targets flying at medium to low altitude.
 
What % of western allied CAS aircraft were SHOT DOWN by Luftwaffe aircraft ?
That was the question.
 
Could be Milosh.

But after the Battle of Britain I thought the primary German focus was on shooting down the bombers that were attacking them. And Spitfires weren't used all that often as escorts ... so somehow, this gyt managed to come across the relatively short-ranged Spitfires on a damned regular basis. I'd love to see something like some average for bomber kills versus fighters kills for some of the Luftwaffe aces ... but that would be asking a lot given the state of the data from Germany.

From the spring of 1941 the RAF was flying Rhubarbs, Rangers, Circus' and Rodeos over the continent. What fighter a/c do you think was the most prevalent?

Glossary of RAF code names - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

R.A.F and U.S. Fighter Commands

http://lesbutler.co.uk/claims/tonywood.htm
 
I seem to remember reading - probably in one of Caldwell's books - that the RAF was able to confirm every single one of Priller's awarded kills.

If you examine the kills of any one pilot they will usually correspond to a loss on the enemy side. The problem is there are usually multiple pilots making claims.

Looking at Priller's claims for the last week of June 1941:

23 June, Circus 19:

Luftwaffe claims:
1 Blenheim (Rotte) (awarded)
3 Spitfires (Priller, Seifert, Morzinek) (all awarded)

RAF losses:
2 Spitfires

25 June, Circus 22

Luftwaffe claims
8 Spitfires (Rysavy, Pflanz, Morzinek, Rysavy, Seeger, Schlieffen, Priller, Balthasar) (all awarded)

RAF losses:
2 Spitfires

27 June, Rhubarb

Luftwaffe claims:
3 Spitfires (Priller, Held, Jäckel) (all awarded)

RAF losses:
1 Spitfire (the RAF believe it was lost to enemy flak)

30 June, Circus 27

Luftwaffe claims:
3 Spitifres (Richey, Pfeiffer, Priller) (all awarded)

RAF losses:
1 Spitfire

If you look at all those operations, the Luftwaffe were awarding 3 times as many kills as they were actually getting. Priller might have been the only one with accurate claims, but there's nothing to really suggest he was.
 
Many thanks for posting that, hop. Hopefully someone will make a book that would encompass as great part of ww2 as possible, in a similar manner.
 

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