Comments by "" (@neutronalchemist3241) on "Why did the German Aces have so many Air Kills?" video.

"What about Hartman and his 351 kills? Was this propaganda too?" Not propaganda, claimings, and every party in WWII overclaimed heavily. The "confirmed kills" not only of Germans, but of British, US, Italians etc. pilots, had been ridiculed after being compared with the actual losses of the enemy. Many times the numbers were so inflated to not be compatible with mistakes made in good faith. Add to this that the 351 kills of Hartman, like that of all the late war German aces, were not even confirmed, since, at the end of the war, the German confirmation process was still counting the kills of 1943.
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Really not. 352 are those he wrote in his personal logbook. The Luftwaffe confirmation process was dead by the time Hartmann obtained most of his victories. To claim a victory, Luftwaffe required to the pilots to fill in a module, writing the day of the kill, the hour, the kind of aircraft shot down, the location, the quote of the engagement, and the name of a witness. Hartmann himself said that he didn't always followed the rules. In much of his claims, from nov. 1944 on, the hour, the location, and the quote of the engagement are not even reported.
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Is not lying, is claiming, and every faction in WWII overclaimed heavily. Unfortunately, the "natural" overclaiming of all the WWII air forces was inflated in the Luftwaffe by the absence of a confirmation system in the second part of the war, and by the "experten" system, that gave huge incentives to the pilots to exagerate the claims, cause, in a very difficult situation, where the pilots had to fly until their death, the pilots with more kills got the best of everything, starting with the aircrafts. It was a matter of survival. Actually the "experten" system affected the German war effort in several ways. IE, from the German pilots' logbooks, we see that they shot down a disproportionately high percentage of fighters. In the German +100 pilots' killing lists, bombers are near to non existent. Of Marseille's 152 credited killings only three were bombers. While Rommel's supply lines were mauled by British bombers, Marseille was shooting down exclusively fighters. Why? Cause to shoot down a bomber was more difficult and dangerous, and it still counted as "one". That not means that the "+100" German aces were not exceptional pilots. They were. And that not means that they did not shoot down much more aircrafts than any other. They did. And there are good explanations for that. We heard them in the clip. Target rich environment. A lot of combat mission flown. And the simple natural selection. Germany manufactured a huge number of fighter aircrafts, and instructed a lot of pilots. A lot of newbies were shot down in their first mission, but few "superpilots" emerged. Only, you have to keep in mind that those lists were claimings, not actual killings.
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Well, no. There is no way to "fully confirm" a claim. "Fully confirmed" means only that, when he claimed an aircraft, the allied lost an aircraft, not necessarily of the same kind he claimed, roughly at the same time in the same place. Problem is that he had not been the only one that claimed a kill in that engagement. IE, there had been 1 allied fighter shot down for 4 claims. So, if you give it to Prillers, three other pilots overclaimed. So, who was lying? An example. On 18 December 1939 (when the confirmation system of the Luftwaffe still worked), the RAF decided to mount a raid on the German fleet at Wilhelmshaven and orders were drafted for 24 Wellington bombers to carry out the raid. 9 aircraft from 149th Squadron, 9 from 9th Squadron and 6 from 37th Squadron were selected to "Attack enemy warships in the Schillig Roads or Wilhelmshaven. Great care is to be taken to ensure that no bombs fall on shore". While 24 Wellington's took off, 2 from 149th Sqn returned to base early leaving 22 to carry on. The bombers managed to successfully fly over the German Fleet, but their orders about bombing German soil caused the abortion of the raid, as the leader decided the ships, tied up in port, where too close to shore to be bombed. After they turned for home, the German fighters attacked. The ensuing massacre saw the shooting down of 10 Wellingtons, nearly 50% of the attacking force, however the German pilots claimed 34 victories. Over 150% of the total attacking force. After that, since the confirmation process was still working, OKL pruned this down to 26 "confirmed" kills, still more than the total of the enemy aircrafts. So. For example, if Josef Prillers had been in this engagement, and claimed up to 10 kills, Someone that compared his claims with the actual RAf losses could only conclude that it was possible, cause the RAF lost 10 aircrafts. But that's possible only if none of the other pilots hit anything, and all of them lied about their acievements. And that's not realistic. When you compare the claims of the German +100 pilots wit the actual recorded losses of the Allies, that's exactly what happens. The kills were generally (but not always) actually possible, but only assuming that other 100 German fighter planes present on the site, were doing nothing other than occupying space. Cause you have to assume that all the Allied actual losses were inflicted by a single pilot. And that's not realistic. Why this happens? It's cause, in a frantic, swirling battle, it wasn't hard to ASSUME your shots had caused the fatal damage. You make your run, score solid hits, flash past at 300mph+, when you turn you see a 'plane fall out of the sky, It MUST be yours, and your wingman confirms it, as he sees the same thing, and, even if he had not seen it, he confirms it anyway, cause he is the guy that works with you.
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***** "That are only 30 fucking kills." And so? Erich Hartmanhad not been "the best documented pilot in history." Far from that. Much of his victories had been claimed when the German confirmation process was no more working, and, of those, "30 fucking kills" had not even been documented enough to be considered "claimings". Even between the Germans there had been much more "documented" pilots.IE Marseille surely was, but even his "confirmed" kills often don't match the actual allied losses. That was the norm in WWII.
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sharebear421 German confirmation process, and only in theory, required a witness, that could be the wingman of the same pilot that claimed the victory. Decisely not the higher confirmation standard of the war (IE, the Soviets did not considered the witness of the wingman. Not that this saved them from overclaiming). That was in theory, since, in practice, some units habitually submitted unwitnessed claims and these made it through the verification process, particularly if they were made by pilots with already established records. An example regarding Marseille's JG 27. Those are all "confirmed" kills, since, at that time, the Luftwaffe confirmation process still worked. 12 Oct 1941 Allied losses: 2 P-40's were shot down, 1 crashed on landing, 1 crashed inside Allied lines. Luftwaffe: 4 kills were awarded, 2 to Marseille, 1 to Sinner & Franziket. German overclaiming 2:1. 30 Oct 1941 Allied losses: 2 P-40's and 1 damaged Luftwaffe: 4 kills awarded, 3 to Schulz, 1 to Schacht. German overclaiming 2:1 22 May 1942 Allied losses: 1 P-40 shot down, 1 missing and 1 crash landed at base. Luftwaffe: 5 kills awarded. German overclaiming 2,5:1 1 June 1942 Allied losses: 1 P-40 shot down, 1 damaged Luftwaffe: 3 P-40's awarded, 1 Hurricane awarded despite not being present. German overclaiming 4:1 3 September 1942 Allied losses: 2 P-40's shot down, 1 crash landed at base. Luftwaffe: 6 kills awarded, 3 to Marseille & 3 to Stahlschmidt (including a Spitfire, not present). German overclaiming 3:1 5 September 1942 Allied losses: 2 Spitfires shot down, 1 P-40 shot down and 1 damaged Luftwaffe: 9 Kills awarded, 4 (All P-40) to Marseille, 2 to Stahlschmidt and 3 to Rödel. German overclaiming 3:1 15 September 1942 Allied losses: 6 Kittyhawks (of which one shot down by "friendly" AA fire: Lufwaffe: 19 kills awarded. German overclaiming more than 3:1.
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ivan zubak The news to the public were manipulated. The squadron casualty reports needed to be accurate, since from their accuracy depended the operational efficiency of the squadron itself. The commands needed to know DAILY on how much pilots and aircrafts they could count. A squadron couldn't pretend that a MIA pilot was still operative, or to have 20 flyable aircrafts instead of 15. In the news given to the pubic the Royal Navy could pretend to not have lost the Bahram for two monts, or the Neptune for six, but the Mediterranean Fleet knew that those ships sunk, and were no more available to escort a convoy, or fight a battle.
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Well, no. At the beginning of Operation Barbarosssa, a lot of Soviet aircrafts were destroyed on the ground, but they were, in general, modern aircrafts with good performances for the late '30s early '40s. The Soviet air force at the beginning of the war was unbalanced, with too much medium and heavy bombers (that proved to be pretty much useless on the eastern front) and too few light bombers, attack planes and fighters. However the Soviets were already mass producing fighters that had performances comparable to that of the best German ones (the Mig-3 was produced at a rate of about 30 a day in june 1941).
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***** Really not. 352 are those he wrote in his personal logbook. The Luftwaffe confirmation process was dead by the time Hartmann obtained most of his victories. To claim (not to confirm, since the German confirmation process, as said, was dead by that time) a victory, Luftwaffe required to the pilots to fill in a module, writing the day of the kill, the hour, the kind of aircraft shot down, the location, the quote of the engagement, and the name of a witness. Hartmann himself said that he didn't always followed the rules. In much of his claims, from nov. 1944 on, the hour, the location, and the quote of the engagement are not even reported. Show less
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"When you say axis in the maltese contest you are refering to italians aircrafts" No. Both Italian and Germans operated over Malta, (much of Beurling's kills were Bf109 infact) and, when Beurling was defending the Island, Italians used Macchi C.202 and Reggiane Re.2001, that were not worse fighters than the contemporaries Bf109f and Spitfire V. Beurling was only a very good pilot that operated in an environment that advantaged him somehow (he had his plane badly damaged and crash landed several times. Had he operated far from friendly airports, he would have crashed into the sea, or in hostile territory way before claiming his 30th victory).
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***** So you are not talking nor of "confirmed" nor of "actual" kills. You only decided to trust what the pilot said.
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"George Beurling destroyed over 30 axis planes in two months in the target rich Maltese skies." "Claimed". Like for the other fighting aces of WWII, not all the victories he was awarded with actually matched the losses of the enemy.
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About 1/5 of Beurling claims are simply impossible, as they do not match with Axis actual losses. For much of the others there is the usual problem of comparing the claims of a pilot with the losses of the enemy. He claimed a kill and the enemy lost a plane, so it's possible that he shot it down. But he had not been the only one that claimed a kill so, to give it to Beurling instead to another pilot is completely arbitrary.
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Krystof Mraz During the Battle of Britain the RAF "confirmed" kills had been twice the Luftwaffe actual losses. RAF confirmation process was not really better than others.
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Beurling was surely an excellent pilot. But On 10 october 1942, when he reported to have shot down two Bf109, the Luftwaffe lost none. On 25 september, when he reported two Bf109 shot down and one damaged, the Luftwaffe had only a Bf109 crash landed on Sicily, and so on. If that's of any consolation, he had not been the only one. That was pretty much the norm in WWII.
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Long story short, the Germans failed to develop a good long range escort fighter. The Bf109 could escort the bombers only for few miles over Britain. Not having an escort, German bombers had to rely on night bombing, and night bombing was not accurate (see the wikipedia page on the "battle of the beams" for further informations on the attempts to overcome this limitation), so, instead of targeting British war factories, Germans had to rely on terror bombing over big cities, that had spectacular, but not really useful effects over the British war effort. Having their factories unaffected, the British could trow more and more fighters against the German bombers, that suffered increasingly high loss rates. Given those conditions, it was only a matter of time before the Germans had to give up, due to simple attrition.
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The Zero was probably the best embarked fighter in 1941, but was already outdated in 1943. The Bf109, in its various versions, had been probably the most easily produced fighter of the war, with only about 3000 man-hours required to assemble one. The corresponding figures for a Spitfire are above 16000.
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+Patrick 1911 During the war the aircrafts of the various powers evolved to counter what the enemies had. So, almost every time one of them introduced the lastest toy, he had the best thing in the sky, until someone else introduced something even more advanced. Moreover, other than the raw performances, it has to be seen how much the aircraft is adapted to the kind of war you are fighting. IE, in the Pacific teatre, range was paramount. On the Russian front it had very little importance.
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