My, touched a sore spot, I see. Sorry to get you so worked up about this. Actually, some of us have been over the topic before; see the thread at:
http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=62993&referrerid=4533. Still, it can be fun, and with two people as sensitive and polite as you and Scholtz, it might be worth going over again.
Would love to know the source for the first paragraph of your note...the one about eyewitnesses and so on.
You said you have done a "fair amount" of reading on that... how come you are not familiar with the very basics.. What exactly have you read ? Kind of scary, but it might well be that I was reading this stuff before you were born. Back when it was in books, with sources and such. I didn’t keep a running bibliography over the years, so I can’t really give you an “exact” list. Now that you mention it, though...what - exactly - have you read?
Because it appears to be completely at odds with known examples of false claims, such as when JG26 strafed old glider wrecks and claimed them as kills.
Do you know the difference between a kill claim and a confirmed kill ? Sure do. Do you know whether the scores of your top German aces are confirmed, or only claims? At the end of the war, the Luftwaffe destroyed its master list of victory confirmations. Even before that, the RLM system of confirming gruppe claims had broken down. We have therefore been left with only “claims,” rather than “confirmed claims.”
Knocke was proven to be a liar, I believe, particularly regarding a number of stories he told of the end of the war.
"Proven"? When, where, by whom, in what?Ah. Here I offer an apology. I was thinking of Willi Heilman, not Heinz Knocke. Sincerely sorry. However, on the assumption that you’ll question my characterization of Heilman, too, I’ll refer you to Caldwell’s “JG 26 - Top Guns of the Luftwaffe.” In my edition (Ivy Books, 1991), I’m thinking especially of the account at pages 357-358 where we learn that Heilman’s claim “that his departure from the war was preceded by a solemn ceremony in which he discharged his entire Staffel to return to their homes” was, as Caldwell notes, “rubbish.” Turns out Heilman and his pals deserted a month before the war ended. I never did believe his story of how he “instinctively” shot down the Spitfire that was escorting him to Allied lines, yet was spared by the gallant English pilots. But I do apologize about Knocke, I’ve always thought his book (“I Flew for the Fuhrer”) was refreshingly honest.
You may choose to believe that 100 German pilots shot down 15,000 planes, but frankly I think that is so completely at odds with the experience of all the other countries involved in the war that it is beyond belief.
[some omission of your material]
So yes, I choose the version about the 100 top German pilots knocking down 15 000 planes. It`s fully supported by the records of both sides. Besides, it was the aces that knocked down the planes, some 6% of the total pilot strenght was responsible for 50-60% of the kills. The rest were just assisting, perhaps never scoring a kill.I’m perplexed at how Allied records could possibly support individual German pilot claims. As discussed a bit below, even the German records don’t necessarily support their claims. But that’s fine, of course, you can believe whatever you want to believe. Fact is, there were a number of other countries involved in the war for a long time, and many of them kept their pilots in constant action over that time, and not one of them produced even one ace whose claims even came close to half of what each of 100 German pilots claimed to be their minimum “confirmed” score. Not the Japanese (admittedly I do not buy the Nishizawa total), not the English, not the Russians, Canadians, Australians, Chinese or anyone - anyone - else. Length of time in service hardly explains it. Hartman didn’t even start flying until well into the war, as someone has already pointed out. Johnnie Johnson fought for most of the war, and had 38 kills - Britain’s top fighter pilot. The top US ace had 40. Widewing has already suggested that the top Russian ace didn’t have anything even close to 60. But the Germans had 100 guys with over 100 kills? Many with 200, one with over 300 (and he's the guy who only started flying halfway through the war)? I would think that there would be at least some skepticism about this from you folks.
So let me leave you with just a couple more passages from Caldwell’s book. I think most of us accept that he worked hard with original sources.
At pages 169-171 of my version, Caldwell discusses the famous point system. “The pilots of the western Geschwader were convinced that their eastern brethren received more than their fair share of battle honors.” So the point system was instituted. Caldwell notes that “It has been pointed out in many postwar references that the point system existed for the purpose of award qualification only. ‘Victory claims’ and ‘points’ were two distinct statistics. The requirements for the verification of victory claims remained unchanged; only the RLM in Berlin could confirm a claim, and this procedure could take more than a year. The practice of claiming ‘separations’ died out in JG 26 in 1944, but it was quite common during the savage combats of 1943. Research for this book revealed that many pilots’ ‘separation’ claims were ultimately awarded as ‘victories’; occasionally claims by other pilots were allowed for the ‘final destruction’ of the same aircraft.
It is easy to see that the system led to claims duplication by a factor of as much as two.[/i] Perhaps not coincidentally, the daily Wehrmacht communiques of this period habitually overclaimed American bomber losses by a factor of roughly two. German claims for the destruction of heavy bombers (even when confirmed) are more difficult to reconcile with Allied losses than claims for any other aircraft type; it is probable that part of the explanation lies with the point system.” The emphasis is mine, not Caldwell’s.
The first post in the old thread, listed above, questioned one of Adolf Galland’s claims. Caldwell gives the example (p. 233) of the Kommodore of the 1st group of JG 26 himself leading a June 9, 1944 “attack” on abandoned gliders lying around in Normandy fields - claiming 15 of them as aerial victories. “This attack, and the pilots’ consequent ‘victory’ claims, are a sad commentary on the relevance and effectiveness of the German fighter force at this stage of the war.” No kidding. You’ll read in Heilman’s book of an “attack” he made on airborne gliders shortly after the Normandy invasion. Right.
So we know that, despite the very difficult “rules” pilots were supposed to follow in order to get their claims confirmed....it didn’t work, at least in these instances. Thank you for posting the nice AARs by the German pilots, which are quite similar to AARs of Allied pilots. Point is, if you lie on the report - or, more likely, if you really thought you got a kill and everyone is willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, because you're a great guy, or because you're the Kommodore, or because everyone can use a good morale boost in this very ugly situation - how does your claim get properly classified? We had gun camera films on every plane. The Germans didn’t.
So. You may accept that their experience was not simply unique, but almost other-dimensional. I don't.
- oldman
