LUFTWAFFE EXPERTEN Claims vs. Kills

speaking of 262's has G. Mütkes JG7 bird in München been repainted ?

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Not recently; when it was donated to Germany by the Swiss in 1957 it was in a mottled green and brown scheme. The Deutches Museum resprayed it in a more accurate colour in 1983 and it wears III./JG7 markings as when Guido Mutke flew it, but no swastika. I don't know if it was Mutke who gave them the info on its colour scheme, but from an interview he gave, it looks like it.

swampyankee said:

First aces from the Luftwaffe as opposed to the US? Shocking.

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WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Say it isn't so, Joe!!!

stona said:

And that is unique. It is the only Bf 109 in the world still to wear almost all its war time paint.....I said paint, not colour. The colours may not be as they were when first applied but there is a lot to be learnt from them. The demarcations between the colours, how they were applied etc can all be established by examining this example. All of this is lost on a shiny restoration, no matter how well it is done. Some are not well done at all.

Cheers

Steve

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That body grey really reminds me of the RLM 02 enamel by Model Master I use. And the dark green reminds me a lot of their RLM 70. The blue, though, sure looks faded. I think I even see the violet tint (RLM 75) in the paint at the upper wing root area.

Hmmmm... no unit/squadron/etc markings... any idea who flew this and/or which Geschwader?

Good to see someone is preserving history; its like buying a first edition book and revering the old beat-up dustcover.

It is an unusual aircraft with a remarkable history and the Aussies are lucky to have it.

I'll attempt a brief "over view".

The W.Nr. 163824 tells us that it was built in late 1943 at Regensburg as a standard Bf 109 G-6. There is evidence that the rear part of the bulges associated with the DB605D and DB605AS engines have been removed (from both sides) indicating that the fuselage was adapted to some other version. I have seen mention of a G-5 but can't remember the source.
Sometime in February-March 1944 it was rebuilt as a Bf 109 G-6 with relevant alterations to the nose.
It may have been with JG 1 or JG 11 until damaged in May 1944. The next few months are unclear but in August 1944 it was with Flzg.Uberfuhr.G.1. a headquarters unit and on the 12th of that month was 30% damaged in a collision while taxying.
It was re-built as a standard Bf 109 G-6 by Ludwig Hasen Flugzeug Reperateur Werk in Munster in December 1944. Here it was fitted with the 30mm MK 108 cannon (U4 specification) and provision for a drop tank (R3 from memory).
It was captured in this state by the allies before assignment to any unit, hence the lack of markings.

Most of the above is in Brett Green's "Augsburg's Last Eagles" with some information about the August '44 damage via John Beaman.

I believe the fact that it is still wearing it's "original" paint in the sense of how it left Ludwig Hasen in 1944 to be both amazing and of the utmost importance. It gives a rare insight into how these late war aircraft actually looked. They certainly didn't look like the manufacturers' handbook, RLM approved, drawings. That's just my opinion.

Cheers

Steve

swampyankee said:

First aces from the Luftwaffe as opposed to the US? Shocking. After all, the Germans had a multi-year head start in both WW1 and WW2.

Which air force had the best chance for the last ace in the ETO? Oh, wait. The USAAF, RAF, and Soviet Air Forces may not have had enough German aircraft to shoot down to get the last ace.

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That doesn't explain e.g. following top aces, first combat unit posting mentioned:

Erich Hartmann, 352 kills, first operational posting was to 7./JG 52 on the Eastern Front on 10 October 1942
Wilhelm Batz, 237 kills, he was appointed adjutant to II./JG 52 based on the Eastern front on 1 February 1943
Helmut Lipfert, 203 kills, was posted to 6./JG 52, based on the Southern part of the Eastern front, on 26 November 1942
Joachim Kirschner, 188 kills, December 1941 to 5. / Jagdgeschwaders 3
Gerhard Thyben, 157 kiils, late 1942 to 6./JG 3.
Peter Düttmann, 152 kills, joined 5./Jagdgeschwader 52 on 7 May 1943
Hans Waldmann, 134 kills, was posted to II/JG 52 on the Eastern Front at the end of August 1942.
Heinz Marquardt, 121 kills, From 1 February 1942, he was undertaking fighter instructor duties and operating with the Einsatzstaffel of JFS 5 in support of JG 2 and JG 26 in the defence of France over the Channel front.
Franz Schall, 116 victories, in February 1943 he was transferred to JG 52 on the Eastern Front.
Bernhard Vechtel, 108 kills, 1942?
Heinz Sachsenberg, 104 kills, was posted to JG 52, based in the southern sector of the Eastern Front, in the autumn of 1942

This is an utterly pointless discussion.
There are many factors to consider and I can't be arsed to even start listing them for the umpteenth time.
The men above (and many more) were excellent combat pilots but trying to "prove" that they were better than their contemporaries flying for other air forces is childish /pointless/asinine/usually involves a political agenda/will result in a locked thread/......delete as you see fit.
Cheers
Steve.

Hello Stona
the only thing I want to make is that the explanation of high scores of many LW pilots clearly isn't that they began to score years before than USAAC/USAAF pilots. There were many LW aces with very high scores who began their combat careers in late 42/early 43. As you wrote reasons are far more complicated than that.

Juha

Hi Juha,

Some Luftwaffe aces DID begin to score years before many western aces, but not all did and I don't believe anyone said it was an ironclad rule. Factors that helped the top three German aces were the number and quality of the oppsition at the time, their own skill and equipment, and the fact that they flew until they won, lost, or died. I don't believe anyone as intimating they deliberately enhanced their scores, lied, or anythign else negative. They were the best in the world at that time and place.

So maybe we can agree that we don't want a locked thread because of misunderstanding in here.

There are some people who simply refuse to believe the top three aces' scores. They sometimes claim lies, political bias, etc. I'll stick with 352, 301, and 275 myself and I hope you will, too, while acknowledging that there may be some errors ... and may NOT be any equally as well ... I cannot say with any first-hand knowledge, so I choose to believe the official German victory tally. I heven't seen even ONE of the doubters back that up with research to disprove a particualr victory yet other than some posts about Marseilles that reference documents you can't get to refute their claim of false kills.

The western aces did NOT fly until they won, lost, or died and did NOT fly in a very target-rich environment relative to the environment that Hartmann, Barkhorn, and Rall flew in. German fighters, especially poorly-flown ones, weren't anywhere NEAR as numerous as Soviet fighters on the Russian front in 1942. The flak around German airfields was of a different order of magnitude than the flak around a temporary Russian aifield in the steppes.

So there were a lot of factors involved, but it is safe to say the Germans produced the best aces the world had ever seen no matter which side you are from. Giving credit where credit is due is not wrong nor should it be withheld. If kills are the measure, the top ace in WWI also came from Germany.

That said, there is also nothing saying the top aces for any side were significantly better or worse than the top aces of any other side. If they swapped places, they might well perform about the same as one another in different circumstances. WE can't say with anything like from a position of first-hand knowledge about it.

For me, the top ace will always be Erich Hartmann. I don't care about mission efficiency or any other things, victory total is the top variable in my book, and he is and always will be tops ... unless we see some modern jock fire a MIRV missile that takes out 6 targets with one shot 60 times .... if that happens, Hartmann is still better in my book since he shot them down one at a time ... with bullets and cannon shells from a plane with almost no endurance and performance that was eclipsied even as he was flying it in combat.

Maybe the Soviets would have been better off sending him a case of Brandy, a pretty girl, and avoiding the area where he flew ...

I agree with Greg on this. Until someone can prove otherwise, we have to accept the kill scores. Does that mean there were no errors? Of course not, we just don't habe anything else to go off of.

I however would venture to say that even if we "took away" some of Hartmanns kills, he would still have more than 300 and would still be the ace of aces.

Agree wholeheartedly DerAdler. Most pilots came up short against the nest, but Hartmann DID get shot down and DID run out of fuel on occasion.

So even the best had their bad days. His bad days, at least in WWII, were better than many ...HE came back to fly again.

I'd bet he had some bad days after WWII in Soviet "friendship camps."

Yep, I agree too, Greg and Adler. Target rich environment sums it up. We will never get an exactly accurate picture of victories versus losses, but ongoing research can assist in verifying claims and losses and can only be of benefit to our established knowledge of the subject. Nevertheless, I don't think Hartmann's position at Nummer Eins is likely to be threatened any time soon.

For me Erich Hartmann is the best, because of two points:

1. He never lost a wingman and it is known, that he flew with noobies to train them.
2. Only one single of his personal trained pilots of the Jagdgeschwader Richthofen lost his life in a Startfighter as a testpilot (the pilot was grinded to death from his parachute, because there was a force at that day). All of his personal trained pilots had thousands of hours in a starfighter and hundreds of Bunderwehr pilots lost their life at the big starfighter crises of the Bundeswehr, but not the trained pilots from Hartmann.

That is to me the real performance of Hartmann next to his kill numbers, it shows his talent and that he was never a selfish person, instead of this a great leader to his pilots.

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:

I agree with Greg on this. Until someone can prove otherwise, we have to accept the kill scores. Does that mean there were no errors? Of course not, we just don't habe anything else to go off of.

I however would venture to say that even if we "took away" some of Hartmanns kills, he would still have more than 300 and would still be the ace of aces.

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As I said, within +/- 10% for the day experten, which for the time is pretty good accuracy. With a higher level for the nightfighters (+/- 2% say?).

But it is interesting that you can model the 'experten' by a branch of statistics called 'survival analysis'.
First developed for engineering, particularly electrical engineering now a mainstay in medical statistics. The famous one is the thermionic 'valve' or the light bulb ones (the old tungston ones).
Basically you get a bulge of failures at the beginning, then a drop off in failures, then a slow but steady increase in failures, but never quite to 100%. Taking the valve example with (say) a MTBF of 1,000 hours, then some valves will last a 100,000 hours or even much more, ditto lightbulbs. Funny phenomena.
So given the way the Luftwaffe treated its airmen (fly until die), some were going to survive (not many) but statistically a few would get there. Of that few, some would get high scores.
Obviously certain skills and experience helped a lot (counter balanced by exhaustion), but so did sheer dumb luck.....
Statistically there were some pilots with even better skills who died a lot earlier, but they just ran out of luck.


I should add there are definite cases of under claiming and I;m sure that applied to the experten too. Some times they'd under claim, others over claim, in the wash it was pretty accurate overall.

A classic example is the 109 shot down by a Tse Tse Mossies (with the 57mm) in the Banff strike wing (what a wonderful book for data that one is), but the crew never claimed it. Only came to light with research after the war. I'm sure there were many cases like that on all sides.

DonL said:

For me Erich Hartmann is the best, because of two points:

1. He never lost a wingman and it is known, that he flew with noobies to train them.
2. Only one single of his personal trained pilots of the Jagdgeschwader Richthofen lost his life in a Startfighter as a testpilot (the pilot was grinded to death from his parachute, because there was a force at that day). All of his personal trained pilots had thousands of hours in a starfighter and hundreds of Bunderwehr pilots lost their life at the big starfighter crises of the Bundeswehr, but not the trained pilots from Hartmann.

That is to me the real performance of Hartmann next to his kill numbers, it shows his talent and that he was never a selfish person, instead of this a great leader to his pilots.

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Your point 1, I also think that that was very important even IIRC Hartmann lost one wingman in 45, an ex-bomber pilot who did something stupid against Hartmann's order. I have impression that many top aces looked after their wingmen but not all. And there were those who looked after their wingmen but didn't want to flywith newbies even if it was important for the unit and an AF that newbies learned the tricks of the trade and survived their first 20 combat sorties. Also the top ace of FiAF, W/O Juutilainen was well known for his keeness to listen and advice newbies, he seems to have been exceptionally keen in that even if therei were in the FiAF many pre-war regular senior NCOs who voluntarily took newbies "under their wings".

2 Never heard that before, but again a big plus to Hartmann.

Juha

Not exactly a popular man though, Hartmann
Steve

On the overclaiming, IMHO it was common, even over own territory as was seen during the BoB or during the defence of Reich, and over enemy territory usually more common like the FC claims during 41-42 or LW claims during the BoB. Just a fact of life and at least British knew that already during the war. Partly it can be explained by the crash-landed planes, many of them could be salvaged even if IMHO they were genuine victories even if strickly speaking not totally inside the claiming rules. Much of the overclaiming can be explained by the fact that it was very unhealthy during an air battle to follow the victim until it crashed. One simply shot at a plane hit it or thought that hit it, the target went to downstair, the shooter and his wingman began to look around other victims/threats, after a few moments they saw a flash on the ground and thought that was mine/my leader's. And spending time to follow the victim down wasn't even effective way to do, it was better to shoot at a target, then after thinking it was done to select a next one and attack it without too much thinking what happened the first one.

Juha

It's why gun cameras were widely used by the British and Americans, much less so by the Germans.
Cheers
Steve

The aussie Bf 109 G-6 was built with standard canopy by MttR in 1943, converted to G-6/AS with Erla canopy in March 1944 and converted again to a G-6/U4 after battle damage in later 1944.