Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrey Kuznetsov
Thank you, Johannes!
Maybe somebody know, does the ULTRA records contains info about Kuban air battles in 1943?
Best regards,
Andrey
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Hi Andrey,
The nearest British intercept station to the Kuban in early 1943 was in Cypress, I believe. In other words, not very close but not terribly far away either. In early 1943 the Luftwaffe was falling back from Soldatskaya, Mineral'nyye Vody, Maikop, Salsk, Gigant, etc., to already prepared bases that had been in existence since summer 1942, e.g., Krasnodar, Krymskaya, Anapa, Kerch, Bagerovo, etc. Those bases already had fully established landline communications capabilities, i.e., teletype, and therefore had only occasional need to resort to radio use. The intercept operators on Cypress and elsewhere could only pick up radio transmissions and not those sent by teletype.
I have seen and worked with the Air Ministry A.I.2.(b) airfield cards for that area and time and these included relevant material from ULTRA. There was very little information at all and that fact leads me to believe that the daily reports that you seek were probably sent by teletype and therefore were never intercepted. I have not seen the HW 5 material for that period so I cannot say with certainty that you won't find anything. I just think it's doubtful.
I truly hope someone will step forward who has seen the HW 5 intercepts for the Kuban area for early 1943 and give an opinion on what they saw.
Regards,
Larry