Who was the youngest person to become an ace?

If a German pilot claimed a kill, and it couldnt be confirmed, then it wasnt counted as a kill. As simple as that !

But I agree no system is 100% flawless, and there will always be confirmed kills wich infact werent actual kills. And the Germans were no exception to this, however their system was more robust, and officers did not accept bare claimes !

KBO

 

In areas where it is possible to compare Luftwaffe claims of aircraft downed against actual losses, such as the Battle of Britain, the bomber offensive or the western desert, the Germans usually claimed 2-4 times the actual number lost, about the same as the RAF or USAAF. USAAF bomber crews at times claimed 10 times the number of German fighter aircraft lost. When there are 150 air gunners firing at the same target everyone thinks they got it. Neither the RAF or USAAF cared that much about kills, it was seen as a morale boosting mechanism and I think the LW was probably much the same. And the same applies to the panzer crews.

 

That is simply not true, KBO.

I have examples of engagements where the German pilots had confirmed kills in numbers up to five times the number of aircraft actually shot down, sometimes more than the total number of enemy aircraft engaged.

 

Yes but they were confirmed not claims, although they were way off.

If it couldnt be confirmed then it wasnt counted as a kill, but that doesnt mean it actually 'was' a kill ! These kind of mistakes were made by every country participating in WW2.

KBO

 

I think this is turning into a real semantic argument KBO.
The RAF and USAAF also required that claims were witnessed/confirmed before the pilot or gunner was credited with a kill.

I believe most of us have been using the terms "claims" and "kills" to mean the same thing.

 

Let's put this in perspective.

Firstly, every fighter pilot who thought he'd shot a plane down would make a Claim to that effect, therefore even if they did not specifically call it that the Luftwaffe did evaluate Claims.

Second, every airforce would disallow Claims that could not be Confirmed, with the exception as far as I'm aware of the RAF who also rated Pilot's "Probables", it is worth stating here though that "Probables" are usually only referred to as a kind of tie break between pilots of equal Confirmed Kills, so a pilot with 20 Probables and no Confirmed Kills would still be considered lower than a pilot with a single Confirmed Kill.

No Pilot's Kill total I've ever seen was based on Claims, only Confirmed Kills, the Luftwaffe is no different in that respect from any other airforce.

I think the distinction to be made here is that the Luftwaffe may have had a strict system of Confirming Kills, but this does not mean a Confirmed Kill equated to an aircraft shot down, nor does it mean that pilots would not Claim Kills that were not subsequently Confirmed. I think on this we all agree.

As I said earlier, regardless of the method of establishing and confirming a Pilot's kill total and even allowing for a margin of error, Hartmann managed an impressive score in a pretty short space of time, but it is worth stressing that the Luftwaffe pilots fought a very different war and despite high scores it was one that many of even the best aces did not survive. Western pilots by comparison may have had lower scores, but far more Western aces went home to their families at the end of hostilities than Luftwaffe aces.

KBO, I have not read the book you refer to, what was the Luftwaffe system for confirming a claim based on?

 

Agreed, that is essentially what i ment.

Quote from the book:

In the light of post-war investigation, it is now conceded that overclaiming occurred in every airforce. Mostly this was attributable in the heat and confusion of battle. Sometimes it was a case of genuine error - the retail of smoke emitted by a Bf-109 diving away at full throttle fooled many an Allied fighter pilot or air gunner into believing that his oppponent was mortally hit. Only in very rare instances was it a matter of deliberate deceit. And any pilot suspected of falsifying his victory claims was given very short shrift by his peers.
Each of the combatant airforces tried to regulate claims by a strict set of conditions. None more so than the Luftwaffe, wich required written confirmation of the kill by one or more arieal witnesses to the action, plus - if possible - back-up confirmation, also in writing from an observer on the ground. Given the amount of paperwork this engendered back at OKL in Berlin, it is little wonder that it could sometimes take a year or more for a pilot's claim to recieve official confirmation.

Despite such bureaucratic safeguards, some of the more astronomical claims by Luftwaffe pilots on the eastern front still remain the subject of discussion, doubt and downright disbelief. So how were they achieved ? There is no simple answer, but rather a unique set of circumstances wich was not replicated in any other campaign.
Firstly, it must be borne in mind that Luftwaffe pilots did not fly 'tours', with lengthy breaks in between, as was the practice in Allied air forces. Most remained operational until either killed, incapacitated or elevated to a staff position. Apart from periods of leave, there were many who served in frontline units throughout the entire war, from the first day of hostilities until the last.
Also for much of the airwar in the east, the Jagdwaffe enjoyed undisputed superiority in those three essentials to survival and succes-equipment, training and tactics.
The Bf-109 was a far better fighting machine than anything the Soviets possessed during the early years of the air war in the east. In the opinion of some veterans it remained so until the very end - 'unencumbered (i.e. without additional underwing weaponry such as gondolas or rockettubes), the Bf109 was superior to the Yak-9'.

Best regards, KBO.

 

Thanks KBO, interesting.

The US and Britain had similar requirements, although Gun camera footage was prefered to separate eye witness reports, and generally thought more reliable.

How did the Luftwaffe define a destroyed aircraft though?

It may sound a silly question, but relatively few fighter kills would actually be seen to hit the ground or explode/disintegrate in mid air by the claiming fighter pilot, so do you know what criteria the Luftwaffe used to determine whether an enemy aircraft was destroyed?

 

However gun-camera's werent always available, and then the other pilots from the action were used as witnesses. Gun camera's were also used on the German side, but they were equally rare with them aswell.

Im not sure, I'll have to look into it.

Best regards, KBO.

 

As KBO quoted Germans flew alot of combat missions. Hartmann flew 1425 missions to kill 352 planes. That gives him 4,05 missions for every downed enemy plane.

The top scoring USA ace Richard Bong flew 200 missions to kill 40 planes. That gives him 5 missions for every downed enemy plane.

If Richard Bong would have totaled the same amount of missions as Erich Hartmann, he would have racked up 285 enemy planes.

 

At least we know Bong downed that 40 planes. Every Allied ace had their score revised ( read reduced ) after WWII. But, for some reason, the same was never done with the German aces. I can understand the difficulty in checking up on Hartmanns score, but let us not jump to the conclusion that he was the only ace of WWII who didn´t overclaim. We know Galland did, why is it so hard to imagine that Hartmann did it as well ?

 

There are only 24 claims made by Bong to which we can clearly find a matching loss in the Japanese documents, the place where the plane ended up and even the wreckage. Rest are either in the bottom of the sea, weren't listed as a loss by the Japanese or the wreckage was never found. I still would think I'd be considered crazy, if I go around and claim "Bong's 40 kills were fake!".

I doubt one can ever be certain what is the true figure of claims versus actual kills. The confirmation system for Germans were infact tougher than that of those for aviators from the USA. For USA, an eyewitness in another aircraft or gun camera film confirmed aerial victory credit claims.

For Germans, all the above plus most of the cases they needed a wreckage of the downed plane or a separate eyewitness (troops in the front line were fine) to confirm the kill.

Allied pilots were most of the times attacking, not defending, so a wreckage for a downed plane were usually impossible to find (Ie USAAC claims over Europe before Normandy) It was a moral booster for the troops to have a lot of kills over Nazis. Like in the Schweinfurt raids where bombers made claims for 288 and the escorting fighters made claims for 19 kills. The German fighter casualties appear to be 36 shot down and 12 written off.

There has been numerous studies about the kills Hartmann did. Altough many of the kills he made can't be confirmed as of today (like in every other study made from any fighter ace in WW2) the total number is considered pretty close.

Feel free to conduct another nonbiased study if you like.

 

I don't think Hartmanns score is 100% correct, and that this was exactly how many planes he shot down. But his score is just as believable as any Allied ace's score !

KBO

 

Especially since he flew and fought mostly against the Red Air Force, whose pilots, save those in the Guards units, were not known for great skill.

 

No, mostly because he flew over 1400 missions, you wont find any allied fighter pilot who has flown that many missions.

 

The reason why the german pilots ended up with way more kills was because they weren't rotated at all (They kept flying until they were killed, wounded or captured) and the russians had huge amounts of green pilots, flying in huge numbers almost everyday. For comparison, in the pacific, when the japanese came out in force later in the war, (before kamikazes) they were shot down in great numbers. This happened rarely in the pacific but was a daily occurence on the eastern front, thus explaining the huge kill amounts of German pilots on the eastern front.

 

But it doesnt explain the huge kills on the West front.

The Germans had alot of green pilots themselves(Especially in 44-45), but their training wasnt as hasty as the Russian one, thus superior.

KBO

 

German pilots didn't have as many kills flying against the Western Allies as they did in Russia, Molders, Galland, and Marseille aside. One of Germany's leading aces (Rall, I think, but don't quote me on that) flew in the West in 1940, went to Russia in 1941, then returned to the West in 1942, I think it was. He said that he picked up a lot of bad habits in Russia, where racking up kills was so easy, and that when he flew against the British again, the RAF promptly shot him down. Since he survived the experience, it drove home some important lessons that he never forgot again.

 

You'll be surprised how many German aces there were on the western front with over 50 kills.

KBO

 

Or vice versa. some fighter pilots that were wery succesful against western allies were quickly killed when tranfered to eastern front.