ratings of German experts

[wannabetheace]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrey
About high ratings of German experts:

1. Nobody checked their clams, often it was impossible to define what happened with the plane been attacked. Simply, the Nazi propaganda machine needed heroes and the fighter experts were those heroes.

To get true level of their victories check the German and British data about RAF casualties during Battle for Britain.

2. the ussr had to send in fight green novices. the ussr had no time to prepare new pilots for a year like the usa had. so their losses were high especially in 1941-43.

3. in 1941 the most of the soviet air forces consisted of archaic planes.

later better planes began to arrive.

4. for the germans to shoot one more enemy plane often was the primary target of a mission. they often did it independently from the interests of ground forces. for example, if a large group of soviet planes attacked a german ground position a couple of experts ("free hunters") didn't try to prevent it but hunted for damaged planes which went away from the formation and were easy victims. of course in such case the score of those hunters increased very much but the ground forces suffered.

in the soviet air forces the personal score never was so important, they tried to fulfil their task at first. If the task of a group of pilots was to defend an important bridge they ought to do it at first and not to shoot as more as possible enemy planes. So Soviet fighter often began to fight at any conditions but the gErmans tried to fight only in the conditions favourable to them.

Also, in many Soviet airforce squadrons, the pilots might 'give' their kill of the day, to the squadrons main tally, so that often the squadron, or the larger formation would have tens or hundreds of kills more, than were listed as the individual pilots victories combined!

This was done on occasion in the RAF too... Also the Red Airfoce and RAF had in common, was that aircraft kills were not always displayed on aircraft. This not only because they were having a different plane every time, but it wasnt considered 'proper', in many RAF circles, as they felt that the squadron had earned the kills as a group effort... This kind of mentality or something similar, was also prevalent in the Red Airforce... And the Japanese fighter squadrons, ofcourse every side had some great individualist aces, who displayed their kills, this is only natural, especially after their country's media got hold of them!

But, then again, the propaganda value of the ace was undeniable, and all sides wanted to shoot down the enemies famous aces (it has been said, that once Hans Joachim Marseille, the great ace of the desert war, was killed, the RAF pilots noticed that the morale of the Lufwaffe pilots had went down, they didnt press on as hard as before, this was the downside of the worship of the 'experten', that was full blast especially in the Lufwaffe).

The Germans offered somekind of prise to the pilot who would shoot down the woman ace who'm the Germans knew as 'the rose of Stalingrad', this female pilot had 'only' 8 kills under her, (some female pilots were well over 20, but I guess this woman was the first female, thus the big deal), anyway, she actually didnt have a rose on her plane, it was a lilly, but the germans thought it was a rose.

Soviet ground troops saw her end, when two units of the opposing airforces clashed, once the 'red rose of Stalingrad' had been identified, it was as if the whole German squadron had gone mad, they sent somewhere arround 7-10 ME-109s after her, just for one plane, and ofcourse with those odds, she was hit, but managed to crash land her plane inside Russian lines, she even managed to get out of the plane, but then succumbed to her wounds and died. She got a hero's funeral.

But the behaviour of the Germans when they identified her, told something of their fixation on the 'experten', it was if the whole rest of the Russian planes had stopped to exist! They only saw this one plane, and I'm shure it cost them a couple fighers of their own... I wish I could remember the woman's name... I could try Wikipedia, but her knickname for the Germans was the 'rose of Stalingrad', and I suppose the Russians called her 'the Lilly of Stalingrad', after it had become a thing, like with Vasily Zaizev, in the film 'Enemy at the gates', starring Jude Law as the young sharpsooter from the Urals, who became one of the most famous snipers ever...

source:http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forum...t=61920&page=2