Flugbuch Fw. Emil Handt, BF I./NJG3 late 1944-1945 -genuine or false?
 

Dear all,

One of my German contacts bought a copy of the Flugbuch of a Fw. Emil Handt, Bordfunker in I./NJG3 in late 1944-1945, in an eBay auction. The copy appears to have genuine pencil marks, like the linkage of the Feldpostnummer to NJG3. The Flugbuch has a remarkable number of ops flights, Abschüsse/Feindberührungen and Luftkämpfe in late 44 and 45 with different and well-known pilots in 1. and 3./NJG3, like Schröder, Koch, Jank, Husemann, Schadowski, Götze. A cross-check with the FB/LB of a number of these latter pilots brought to light that none of the ops flights/Abschüsse etc listed in the Emil Handt FB are documented in the latter FBer etc. I therefore have a suspicion that the Emil Handt Flugbuch may be a falsification...

I would welcome any comments if the Emil Handt FB is actualy genuine, or false.

Cheers, Theo

Re: Flugbuch Fw. Emil Handt, BF I./NJG3 late 1944-1945 -genuine or false?
 

Hi Theo

I have seen an ammended flugbuch, in itself it is genuine, but somebody had added in post-war many claims that were fake. Also have seen a fake abschüßlist for a pilot(103 claims) of the Schlacht units, these are sporadically represented on the mikrofilms, but not one match with those known(I even tried to match it to another pilot August Lambert), so faking documents does seem to be a business. Have also seen genuine unused flugbuch for sale, so with one of these it is possible to make a fake flugbuch.

I take it there is nothing to compare the handwriting with then?

Kind Regards

Johannes

Re: Flugbuch Fw. Emil Handt, BF I./NJG3 late 1944-1945 -genuine or false?
 

Hi Theo,

by my estimation, all entries in the Flugbuch after 5 September 1944 are false, likely all added post-war.

This is easily verifiable when compared to the genuine Flugbuchs for pilots Eduard Schröder, Hans Shadowski, and Hubert Koch.

Handt flew with Schröder on 5/09/44, as verified by Schröder's FB. Schröder was meticulous in recording the names of the crew he flew with. According to Schröder's FB, Handt made no flights with him after 5/09/44. According to Handt's FB, he made seven more flights with Schröder, but only one of those supposed flights was even on the same day that Schröder happened to fly.

It's a similar story with Schadowski. Handt's FB shows three flights with Schadowski in 1945, none of which are on days that Schadowski's FB records flights...

Handt's one recorded flight with Hubert Koch on 28/09/44 is also fabricated.

Re: Flugbuch Fw. Emil Handt, BF I./NJG3 late 1944-1945 -genuine or false?
 

Thanks Johannes and Rod for your comments -all clear, alas another falsification...

Cheers, Theo

Re: Flugbuch Fw. Emil Handt, BF I./NJG3 late 1944-1945 -genuine or false?
 

Altered Flugbücher are unfortunately a fact were we as historians need to deal with. I have seen several. Things that I have seen;

1) Altering details to fancy the Flugbuch......adding a flight with a Me 262 as it is 100% confirmed he flew a Fw 190 on that specific day

2) Also common is adding flights at the end, especially when their last Flugbuch was lost. Sometimes done as good as possible from memory, but sometimes also blatantly exaggerated with far too many Feindflüge, combats and victories....

This was all done by the original owners...

I did not encounter a complete fabricated or falsified Flugbuch yet, but that could be attractive to some people to make a financial gain....I assume this was not done by the "owner" themselves

Re: Flugbuch Fw. Emil Handt, BF I./NJG3 late 1944-1945 -genuine or false?
 

Hi Guys

Let us not forget abschüßeliste the historian Hans Ring often added claims on at the end so as to know "HIS" information was used i.e twenty-eight added to Woidich's.

Perhaps the Leistungsbuch of Walter Dahl is fake also.

Kind Regards

Johannes

Re: Flugbuch Fw. Emil Handt, BF I./NJG3 late 1944-1945 -genuine or false?
 

Another apparent fake is the Flugbuch of Stabsfw. Walter Arnold covering his Ar 234 flights with Kommando Sommer in Italy, which I spent a lot of time trying to corroborate: http://www.ghostbombers.com/recon/23...er/arnold.html

Someone had gone to an awful lot of trouble compiling it but it didn't add up.

Re: Flugbuch Fw. Emil Handt, BF I./NJG3 late 1944-1945 -genuine or false?
 

Thanks for your additional comments chaps. I can add that, during my research of the Nachtjagd over the past 40 odd years, I have never come across a completely fabricated/falsified Flugbuch and/or Leistungsbuch, but sometimes details/flights/comments were added post-war, which are not necessarily always true. So always check and recheck is and remains the credo.

And yes, Johannes' remark about the Hans Ring/Emil Nonnenmacher Abschussliste and falsifications of many Abschussmeldungen to 'protect' their own primary research is true. During the research of the NCA series, it took me (and Rod) a lot of effort to straighten out the false entries from these listings, after the publication of the Nachtjagd War Diaries in which these falsifications had seeped in. This is alas also the case in the Foreman/Matthews/Parry NJ claims book, which contain many falsified entries from the Ring/Nonnenmacher listings.

Cheers, Theo

Re: Flugbuch Fw. Emil Handt, BF I./NJG3 late 1944-1945 -genuine or false?
 

So theo, what do you think of the FB of Fw. Emil Handt...was it created by himself or is this something fabricated by somebody else?

Re: Flugbuch Fw. Emil Handt, BF I./NJG3 late 1944-1945 -genuine or false?
 

Hi Guys

I am the Mathews from Foreman/Mathews. John Foreman visited Hans Ring at his home. Said he was very obliging, would just throw abschüßeliste and Leistungsbücher at him. I questioned John about Nonnenmacher, John informed me that Nonnenmacher was a civilian, I attributed the fact I could find only one claim on the mikrofilms to that, but as you say, could be his abschüßlist was doctored, not sure by whom though.

With Woidich it seems Ring added twenty-eight onto his abschüßlist, but these twenty-eight stand-out. Woidich was an honest claimer, never claiming many in a day, then suddenly it's large numbers and of types he didn't usually get. I told Bernd Barbas they must have been unconfirmed(perhaps because JG 52 was constantly moving at the time) but no they are just false. But here again we have always accepted a total of 110 for him. John always says that once something is printed "It's fact", then plagiarised time and again to it's hard to established where the mistake comes from. Bernd had planned to meet Woidich, but Woidich was ill and cancelled, and died before they could make another date, Woidich didn't attend the JG 52 memorials and died possibly not knowing he was a "110" ace. His personal abschüßlist has just the eight-two.

John gave me a huge listing of 1945 claims(presumably from Ring) which is a time period not covered by the mikrofilms, I suspect most of the fake data in the night-fighter book comes from this, or very early claims as many of the Staffeln typed-out mikrofilms are missing.

I still occasional identify a name from the mikrofilms that I previously hadn't, not many left now. Strangely though some NJG pilot I have yet to identify are of rank that means they should be at least Staffelkapitän !

Kind Regards

Johannes

Re: Flugbuch Fw. Emil Handt, BF I./NJG3 late 1944-1945 -genuine or false?
 

Hello John -I don't know how/by whom these false entries were written in the Handt FB.

@ Johannes -please understand me well, no offence to your work, I do have the highest respect for your meticulous work on the microfilmed Abschuss records. All I'm trying to say is that many earlier works on the Nachtjagd (including mine up until the Nachtjagd War Diaries) are often in part based upon the Ring/Nonnenmacher Abschussliste -which are in part falsified. With the NCA series, we've tried to set this record straight/eradicate as many of the falsified claims as possible.

Cheers, Theo

Re: Flugbuch Fw. Emil Handt, BF I./NJG3 late 1944-1945 -genuine or false?
 

Dear Theo

No offence taken, I understand your angle and agree that outside of the mikrofilms things are often still a dark area. If I was to fake something like you mention I would use what is fact, then fabricate areas outside of the mikrofilms, in the case of the NJG units that would be 1945. I have several photos od abschüßetafel of NJG units(genuine I think/hope) that cover the earlier years, but none seem to have continued into 1945. But we are fortunate that you had a better chance of surviving the war as a NJG crew than day-fighters, so better chance of flugbücher surviving, and with three crew members is triples the chances of getting to the facts, also they were most likely to have surrendered not to the Russians, possibly the best was to be taken prisoner by the British who seemed more disciplined not to steal the flugbücher.
I do know that abschüßeliste were issued to pilots, I have one from a SG pilot who was killed a few days before the end of the war, and his daughter sent me a copy covering 1943, it proved like we suspect that the SG units were slack when it came to reporting their claims for the daily mikrofilm sheets.
I do believe though that Leistungsbücher were self generated.

It's an interesting hobby we have, always evolving/improving, but never ending.

Kind Regards

Johannes

Re: Flugbuch Fw. Emil Handt, BF I./NJG3 late 1944-1945 -genuine or false?
 

Hi Johannes,

what do you mean by Leistungsbücher being "self generated"?

John

Re: Flugbuch Fw. Emil Handt, BF I./NJG3 late 1944-1945 -genuine or false?
 

Hi John

I have seen some as though written by the pilot.

Kind Regards

Johannes

Re: Flugbuch Fw. Emil Handt, BF I./NJG3 late 1944-1945 -genuine or false?
 

The ones I have and have seen were all made and stamped by one of the last units.

Re: Flugbuch Fw. Emil Handt, BF I./NJG3 late 1944-1945 -genuine or false?
 

Hi John

I have at least two hand written Dahl and a JG 5 pilot who's name escapes me at the moment. Naturally they could be fake themselves !

But I know what you mean, like they have been signed-off after the war ended.
What about those pilots who didn't survive the war?

Kind regards

Johannes

Re: Flugbuch Fw. Emil Handt, BF I./NJG3 late 1944-1945 -genuine or false?
 

The consistency in the handwriting between 28/4/44 and the end of the war suggests the same person wrote all the entries between those dates.

Re: Flugbuch Fw. Emil Handt, BF I./NJG3 late 1944-1945 -genuine or false?
 

Dear friends,

From our historian point of view such falsified/fictional enhancement of FB's is rightfully disappointing and arousing suspicions.

But there might be others reasons why pilots/Bordfunker have altered their flightlogs: after the war several pilots tried to improve their chances for higher pensions, promotion in the new Bundesluftwaffe and/or starting a new aviation career by extending their FB's. I remember a letter of Wilhelm Modrow to his former Bordfunker Schneider where he asked for input from Schneiders FB to 'complete' his own FB because he wants to join a civil airline.

Whether (and how often) this was practized among other pilots I don't know, but it is another point of view in this subject.

Best wishes, Marcel

Re: Flugbuch Fw. Emil Handt, BF I./NJG3 late 1944-1945 -genuine or false?
 

Marcel, thank you for the clarification!