Done. Thanks Erich, it's great to have a researcher as well versed as you around these parts.

[ 21 June 2002, 01:52 AM: Message edited by: Otto ]

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"The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance." Socrates

Vielen Dank Herr Feld Marschall !

E

Hello Friedrich
You've got some great replies so I'll add - you guessed it - another book - Constable & Toliver's 'Horrido'.
Published in 1968, it was the 'standard' reference for many years and still holds up pretty well. Published as 'Horrido' in Britain by Arthur Barker and as 'Fighter Aces of the Luftwaffe' by Aero Publishers in the USA, it's a good read as well as reference source.

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

Martin, just how many books do you have anyways??

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"The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance." Socrates

Fair question and the answer is, er, well, quite a few.
My wife despairs ! Still, when you've been collecting for thirty years. . .
But I try only to keep the best and most respected books. So, I'm afraid no James Lucas, Charles Whiting, and I was most amused to read all the Stephen Ambrose 'fanclub' comments - I thought it was only me who couldn't stand the guy!

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

Hallo, Alle!

Thanks, Martin. It seems to be that you are some of the good new members we were looking for! New but experienced. I am one of the youngest around here... Not to be in the Hitlerjugend, but the exact age for military service...

Thanks to all who appreciate my exhaustive work. I will try to do much more!

And, do you know which pilot shot down several aeroplanes (maybe 10) even an Spitfire flying a beautifu Me-110? It is one of the men in the list. He did it during 1939-1940 when serving in the ZG-76.

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"War is less costly than servitude, the choice is always between Verdun and Dachau." - Jean Dutourd, French veteran of both world wars

"A mon fils: depuis que tes yeux sont fermes les miens n’ont cessé de pleurir." - Mère française, Verdun

Friedrich, I'll let someone else answer your ZG 76 question as I don;t have much on pre 1943 Luftwaffe ops.

You may want to check your search engines for Luftwaffe Histories. Go to Michael Holm's very good site and find on the left hand side victory listings. Here you will find with footnotes much useful information about the top Luftwaffe fighter pilot aces all the way down the aces with 7 kills. As you would expect there are still quite a few gaps, but at least here you will find a much larger listing......multiple pages.
Also Ernst Obermaier's OOP Ritterkreuzträger Jagdflieger, volume 1 is a good book for coverage, although again errors / covers the Ritterkreuz recievers.

enjoy the research,

E

Was it Hans-Joachim Jabs ?

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"Stand by to pull me out of the seat if I get hit" - Guy Gibson

Nope, men.

It was Oberst Gordon McGollob.

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"War is less costly than servitude, the choice is always between Verdun and Dachau." - Jean Dutourd, French veteran of both world wars

"A mon fils: depuis que tes yeux sont fermes les miens n’ont cessé de pleurir." - Mère française, Verdun

I once tried to count the victories of all the german aces at over 100 victories alone and stopped at well over 10,000.

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Lost are only those, who abandon themselves) Hans-Ulrich Rudel.

This maybe of interest....

JG 52 11,000 victories
JG 54 9,400 victories
JG 51 9,000 victories

JG 300 in defence of the Reich claimed some 1500 kills which is quite suspect as this unit was notorious for overclaiming due to it's first Kommanduer Walter Dahl, whose own self written book, although enlightening has some gross errors in it.

E also I would have to do a recount, but it appears that JG 26 had about 3500 kills and JG 27 possibly over 3,000.

About Hans-Jochim Marseilles, I am very suspicious about some of his claims.

On the 1st of September 1942 Marseille claimed 17 victories against the RAF in the Western Desert. RAF records show that no aircraft at all were lost in the areas that Marseille claimed them in. Furthermore, total aircraft losses ammounted to only 11. Two of the aircraft lost were Hurricanes, a type that Marseille did not claim. Furthermore, some of the RAF's losses occurred when Marseille was on the ground.

First : Let me welcome you to the forums !

Second the action you mention had 4 seperate engagements according to the offical History of I./JG 27. It also does not mention whether they were flown by US or RAF troops. Mis-identification was often the case in the heat of battle for both sides and Marseille as many hot aces could very well have claimed a/c that were not shot down by him.......an all too common occurance that I am finding over the last 37 years of research.

E

Incidently 4 Hurricanes were claimed as shot down. 2 of them by Marseille's usual wingman, Lt. Arnold Stahlschmidt. There seems to be a big confusion even with the looks of the P-40 to the Hurricane and even the Spitfrie as noted in the logbooks of the gruppe. Marseille's claims covered a 3 hour time span from 8.26 top 11.05 and then back in action at 17.47 hours to 17.53 for his last claim of the day, that being a P-40 for his 121st.
On September 2, 42 he claimede 4 P-46's....what is a P-46 ? See what I mean ??

E

I'm well aware that the nature of aerial combat often leads to unintentional overclaiming, and it certainly wasnt restricted to Allies or Axis nations (one B-17 mission claimed 102 LW fighters confirmed as destroyed when the figure was nearer 60). I'm also aware that the Germans, due to the theatres they fought in and various operational differences to the Allies, were better able to accumulate enormous scores, but I always tend to treat all figures on kills with great scepticism, and I also tend to dislike the trend I see of some to overglamourise (if not openly glorify) various German armed forces.

Good, glad you have a real grasp of the situation, as you reference is most probably about October of 43.

E

Oh... You broke my ilussion. I am going to cry...

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"War is less costly than servitude, the choice is always between Verdun and Dachau." - Jean Dutourd, French veteran of both world wars

"A mon fils: depuis que tes yeux sont fermes les miens n’ont cessé de pleurir." - Mère française, Verdun

Some special data on German fighter aces:

Adolph Galland:

He crashed a Focke-Wulf Fw-44 biplane in 1935 while in training. Everyone thought he was dead, and he was in a coma for three days. He had serious skull fractures, a broken nose, which never looked the same again, and was partially blinded in the left eye from glass fragments (some of which stayed in his eye for the rest of his life). After his recovery, he still had to pass the physical, which his CO, Major Rheitel, a World War One pilot, "helped" him to pass. Galland continued flying, but a year later he crashed an Arado Ar-68 and again was hospitalized. The doctors pulled his file, which stated that he was grounded. To pass the next eye examination, he memorized every letter and number in every combination on the eye chart.

In Spain, Galland first displayed his dashing style - flying in swimming trunks, clenching a cigar between his teeth, flying an aircraft gaily decorated with a Mickey Mouse figure. But he was was no mere show-off; he flew over 300 missions in Spain, developed early gasoline bombs, and was awarded the Spanienkreuz mit Schwertern in Gold mit Brillanten.

By the Battle of Britain, Galland was with JG.26, as Gruppenkommandeur of III/JG.26. In the intense aerial combat of late 1940, aerial victories, promotions, and decorations came rapidly:

promotion to Major on July 18
awarded Ritterkreuz (Knights Cross) on August 22
Kommodore of JG.26
the Oak Leaves on September 25
his 50th kill on November 1
Oberstleutnant (lieutenant colonel) in November
Oberst (colonel) in December



Galland met the famed British pilot, Douglas 'Tin Legs' Bader, and even communicated to the British a request for new artificial legs for the great ace. These were delivered, along with a load of bombs, to a German airbase, a combination that Galland found most unchivalrous.

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Erich Hartmann:

He was posted to Jagdgeschwader 52 (JG 52) on the Eastern Front in October, 1942. He scored his first kill in November, and only achieved his second three months later. In the first half of 1943, he worked out some of the tactics which would prove so successful later on. If he was attacked from behind, he would send his wingman down low and out in front. Then he would get behind the enemy and fire a short, quick accurate burst, waiting "until the enemy aircraft filled the windscreen." He would normally content himself with one victory; he was willing to wait for another day. His natural talents began to tell: excellent eyesight, lightning reflexes, an aggressive spirit, and an ability to stay cool while in combat.
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III./JG 52's commander, Major Hubertus von Bonin, placed Hartmann under Oberfeldwebel Grislawski's wings. The miner's son Alfred Grislawski found a particular pleasure in teaching this newcomer the name of the game. He made a few mock combats with Hartmann. This relieved Hartmann of some of his ambitious ideas, but Grislawski had to admit that although Hartmann had much to learn regarding combat tactics, he actually was a quite talented pilot.

The trouble started when they started flying combat missions together. Grislawski immediately noted that the newcomer was one of those who thought they were going to "shoot together a Knight's Cross" in no time. Hartmann barely had started to leave his place behind Grislawski's aircraft to direct his Bf 109 against an I-16, when his earphones seemed to explode:

"You bloody idiot! What the hell are you think you're doing? I'm your leader! Get back in place or I'll shoot you down!"

Grislawski kept cursing over the R/T all the way back to base, and when they had landed, the Oberfeldwebel gave the Leutnant a dressing down that he would never forget. Then - in front of the sweating Hartmann - Grislawski turned to his friend "Paule" Rossmann and said:

"Oh man, this is too much! What a baby they have sent us! Just look at his face - like a cute little boy!"

From then on, Grislawski never addressed Hartmann otherwise than as Bubi, "Little boy."

Hartmann proved to be extremely individualistic, and von Bonin definitely knew what he was doing when he assigned a vigorous and harsh worker's son as Alfred Grislawski as his teacher. The men at Soldatskaya used to gather around the radio equipment and listen to the R/T communication with amusement when Grislawski and Hartmann were out on combat missions.

"Are you so anxious to die, Bubi?"

"I'm sorry, sir!"

"Don't you 'sir' me, look after your tail instead!"

"I'll nail you for this, Bubi!"

"I'm sorry!"

"Your mother will be sorry!"

But finally, Hartmann learned the name of the game. On November 5, 1942 he achieved his first victory - against an Il-2 from 7 GShAP.
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For his extraordinary abilities in a black-nosed Messerschmitt 109, the Soviets dubbed Luftwaffe pilot Erich Hartmann Cherniye Chort or Black Devil,(a name which was wildly at variance with his radio call-sign 'Karaya [Sweethart] One') and placed a 10,000-ruble price on his head.

Krupinski was a bar-room brawler type of pilot. Hartmann was coerced into becoming his Kacmarek and it was he who urged Hartmann to get in close before firing. Many years later after the war Hartmann described the abilities he had developed as a result of his training under Krupinski, Rossmann and others:

I never cared much for the dogfight. I would never dogfight with the Russians. Surprise was my tactic. Get the highest altitude and, if possible, come out of the sun...ninety percent of my attacks were surprise attacks. If I had one success, I took a coffee break and watched the area again.

Finding [the enemy] depended purely on being where the action was concentrated on the ground and on visual look-out. Ground stations called us by radio the position of the enemy after a coordinated system on our maps. So we could search in the right direction and choose our best attack altitude. If I covered the sky, I preferred a full-power, sun attack from below, because you could spot the enemy very far away against a white cloudy sky. The pilot who sees the other pilot first already has half the victory.

The second step of my tactic was the point of decision. That is, you see the enemy and decide whether to attack immediately, or wait for a better situation. or maneuver to make it more favorable, or not to attack at all. For example, if you have to attack the enemy against the sun, if you don't have enough altitude, if the enemy is flying in broken clouds, you keep your enemy in sight far enough so you can change your attack position in the sun or above the clouds, diving to sell your altitude for high speed. Then attack. It doesn't matter if you pick on the straggler or the guy out of formation. The most important thing is to destroy an enemy aircraft. Maneuver quickly and aggressively and shoot in close, as near as possible to ensure the hit and save rounds. I told my men, 'Only if the windshield is filled up, then pull the trigger.'

Finally break or reverse. If you hit and run, think about survival. Immediately check six and reverse. Clear the area for potential attackers or pick a new point of re-entry and do it again, if you have the advantage.

In 825 instances of aerial combat, he was never wounded, and his plane was forced down only 16 times - and often it had been hit by debris from aircraft Hartmann had destroyed.

The Soviets soon learned to steer clear of him. Like the other planes in Jagdgeschwader 52's Sweetheart Squadron, his Messerschmitt displayed a bleeding heart pierced by an arrow. But unlike them it bore his own distinctive markings, a black tulip that Hartmann had painted on its nose. Hartmann flew only 5 or 6 missions with his plane marked in this way. Foregoing a chance to go after the 10,000-ruble prize, Soviet formations would scatter when they spotted the tulip, and the Black Devil's tally leveled off accordingly. Only after Hartmann had the design painted out - and regained his anonymity - did he go on to achieve the score that set an all-time record. The call of 'Karaya One' was, of course, well known to the Russians and they avoided him when possible making the feat all the more remarkable.

After 91 sorties without a kill he made his first on November 9, 1942, and soon after his score began to climb. He had downed 90 planes by the end of August 1943 and by the end of October had scored 148 kills.

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