achievement wishlist

[Marchochias]

Originally Posted by Riceball

That is, if you believe he actually had anywhere near that many victories. I'm sure we all know the German air forces in WW2 were notorious for stretching the truth. Even more so once the Allies turned the tide.

Did he fly in WW1 as well? It would be more believable then.

ALL air forces are notorious for stretching the truth haha. That's why they had such stringent requirements on confirmed kills: several other pilots usually had to confirm them, I believe.

It was counted only as a "probable" or something less than a kill if you were the only pilot to have seen it.

And exaggeration or not, the Germans did have far, far more high scoring aces than the western or eastern allies.

[Riceball]

All it took was one other person for confrimation.

It's true most all pilots told a few lies here and there, but that was only to inflate their personal records. The German government did it as a form of propaganda.

[SeaCat]

People have tried to debunk his victory count, but Russian losses match up to his aerial victories. From what I've read, Luftwaffe records are substantially more accurate than British and American victory counts. Hartmann also wasn't a dogfighter, he'd sneak in until he was about 50-100 feet behind the other aircraft and blast them down. He had strict rules of engagement to maximize the effect of his surprise attacks. In a dogfight, more often than not one aircraft or the other would break off from the engagement, and I can imagine it's hard to rack up a high kill count when you've only done a bit of damage to the other aircraft. He had a great tactical sense, and it wasn't like he was shooting down a bunch of rookies, either. The Russian pilots towards the end of the war were very well trained, more so than what the Luftwaffe was cranking out at the same period (new German pilots had as little as 30 hours before jumping into combat in 1945). All in all, I think we can at least agree he was highly-skilled at what he did.

[Marchochias]

Yeah, you can doubt the accuracy of the grand total, but there can be no doubt he shot down hundreds of enemy aircraft and was an extremely skilled aviator.

"Propaganda" alone doesn't explain why the Germans had dozens of aces with over a hundred kills when the best Western allied one was around 40 I believe. German pilots had more opportunities, especially against basically obsolete French, Polish and some early level Soviet aircraft.

[xNikex]

Achievment: "Eye for an eye" when the same guy that shot you down runs into your parachute killing both of you.

[philip.ed]

Your all forgetting that German pilots included, in all their kills, every battle period they ever fought in. For instance, British pilots in ww2 had their kills from the Battle of France (if they fought) as a seperate tally. So a pilot could achieve acedom in the BoF and then start afresh for the BoB.
For luftwaffe pilots, they inlcuded every war etc they fought in. Some pilots fought in the Spanish Civil war, so that was included in their tally

[xNikex]

Originally Posted by philip.ed

Your all forgetting that German pilots included, in all their kills, every battle period they ever fought in. For instance, British pilots in ww2 had their kills from the Battle of France (if they fought) as a seperate tally. So a pilot could achieve acedom in the BoF and then start afresh for the BoB.
For luftwaffe pilots, they inlcuded every war etc they fought in. Some pilots fought in the Spanish Civil war, so that was included in their tally

Yep. The Spanish Civil war is the war they tested Blitzkreig on, plus BoB which was an all air battle, and all of the invasions.

[Tomo]

Originally Posted by xNikex

Achievment: "Eye for an eye" when the same guy that shot you down runs into your parachute killing both of you.

I'm pretty sure you can't run into parachutes in BoP..

[Riceball]

One more quick thing I forgot was the fact that German pilots had no maximum number of missions or tours of duty. They basically flew until they died. While the Allies did'nt want to lose their best pilots for fear that moral may drop. So I can see how they would have so many flyers with hundreds of victories.

Anyway, sorry to the TC. We kind of hyjacked your topic.

[xNikex]

Originally Posted by Tomo

I'm pretty sure you can't run into parachutes in BoP..

Well they only said you can't shoot them down, but we'll see. I bet there will be a ton of noobs (or those from the original that are unaware of this) that will try to do so and get themselves killed.

But I don't intend to be shot down anyway.