[Juha]

Hello

I checked the war diary of 3./HLe.Lv. 34

according to it Trontti took off to an interception mission to Tali-Lyykylä with 3 other Bf 109s at 10.50 on 26.6.44. Vääpeli (third highest NCO rank in Finnish Armed Forces) Paronen claimed a Yak-9 during the sortie and Trontti didn’t return. The others returned at 12.00. That’s all what is written in the war diary.

It is of course possible that for example Trontti had chased alone some Soviet a/c as far as to Terijoki and met Serov and co there. That would have been a foolhardy thing to do but some Finnish fighter pilots were rather foolhardy. I don’t know if Trontti was one of those risk takers or not.
I checked the victory list in Keskinen et al LeR 3 book against a list in Finnish War Archives (Luettelo Lentojoukkojen alasampumista viholliskoneista) which only gave info on victories at the level of squadrons and it seems that the Paronen’s forenoon victory wasn’t allocated to him but was put to regiment’s account. This happened in 1944 usually when there wasn't a witness to a claim.



Juha