Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!midway!linac!att!cbnews!cbnews!military From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Hartmann and Marseille Message-ID: <1990Dec12.031305.10254@cbnews.att.com> Date: 12 Dec 90 03:13:05 GMT References: <1990Dec11.015903.26972@cbnews.att.com> Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker) Organization: U of Toronto Zoology Lines: 34 Approved: military@att.att.com From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) >From: Paul Stafford >>tactics of Erich Hartmann... the greatest ace of all time, who scored >>352 confirmed kills between 1942 and 1945 without ever getting hurt or >>losing a wingman. > > not exactly- as I recall, he was shot down 7 times, and collided with >target wreckage at least once, downing himself in the process... In fact, he was shot down 16 times and bailed out twice (ref: Edward H. Sims's "The Greatest Aces"), and in fact he was captured (briefly) once. However, my statement still stands: he was never hurt, and never lost a wingman (although he once came close, when a very inexperienced wingman had to bail out). He was also proud of the fact that not once was his aircraft hit by fire from an enemy fighter -- all his losses were to ground fire or bomber defensive guns. > N.B.: IMHO, the best aerial shooter was Hans Joachim Marseille, who, with only >152 kills was much lower on the totem pole, typically used only 10 or so >*shells* per kill, and often came back from his flights( over N Africa) with >7-10 kills. Cited by both sides as the greatest off angle shooter. However, I have heard some doubts raised about his total kill count, on the grounds that British records do not fully support it; some of his kills may have been cripples who made it home. (Mind you, Sims mentions one problem that complicates records checks: Marseille frequently confused Hurricanes with the Curtiss fighters that were also in use in Africa.) He was unquestionably in a class by himself in gunnery, however, even if he was occasionally a bit *too* economical with his ammunition. :-) -- "The average pointer, statistically, |Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology points somewhere in X." -Hugh Redelmeier| henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry