Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cwjcc!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!cbnews!military From: amoss%batata.Huji.AC.IL%CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (Amos Shapira) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: German claims in WW2 Message-ID: <7285@cbnews.ATT.COM> Date: 9 Jun 89 03:28:16 GMT Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM Lines: 82 Approved: military@att.att.com From: Amos Shapira The German "victories" did count aircraft ON the ground, but also marked those as such. However, even THIS claim is inaplicable to Maj. Eric Hartman. True, the Russian airforce was decimated... in the first 2 weeks of the war. Hartman started fighting on October 9, 1942 (after finishing training). First claim was on November 7. During his first 100(!) sorties, he shot down only 7 Reds. After 100 more, his score was 34 (July 1943). On the 20th of September, 1943 he reached 100 victories. His last victory was on the 8th of May, 1945 over Brunn. As for British claims, which were VASTLY exagerated, Top scorer was Pattle with (?) 40+. Score list (top three, all counties): Britain J. Pattle 40+ JE Johnson 33.91 (38) B. Finucane 32 (Pattle- South African, Johnson- British, Finucane- Irish) US of A R. I. Bong 40 T. B. McGuire 38 D. S. McCampbell 34 (Bong and McGuire - 5th AF, McCampbell- USN) Japan T. Iwamoto 80 (+14 China) H. Nishizawa 87 S. Sugita 70 (All Japanese claims are uncertain as the authorities destroyed records in order to reduce "one-upmanship"). Russia I. N. Kozhedub 62 A. I. Pokryshkin 59 G. A. Rechkalov 56 Finland E. I. Juutilainen 92 H. H. Wind 78 E. A. Luukkanen 53.5 [mod.note: I understand that at least one Finnish "high ace", perhaps one of these three, got the bulk of his kills flying an F2A Brewster Buffalo. Can anyone comfirm ? - Bill ] German E. Hartman 352 G. Barkhorn 301 G. Rall 275 A note on scoring: The british, french, US, and Italian (which I did not include for the obvoius reasons) were VERY simple- EVERYONE who fired (participated) at a german plane which ostensibly fell, got a partial score (in some cases, mainly in Britain, they got FULL score). German pilots, on the other hand, received a "kill" only for a CONFIRMED crash. Enemy planes shot down by more than one pilot were scored to the unit ONLY, never the pilot. I am not sertain about the Russian system, but then I am from Russia, and am prejudiced. The Finns emulated the German system, as far as they were able. In Japan (as in Britain, France and Italy) a plane which was damaged was sometimes counted "killed". Thus, Japanese scores are inflated (assumption). In Britain, the "killed"/"damaged"/"forced to land" scoring system existed, with the actual decision reserved to the unit commnader, making the scoring rather flexible. Quiz: Who was the highest scoring fighter pilot on the WESTERN/AFRICAN front ONLY? Marc A. Volovic, Sgt. (res)