[Larry Hickey]

Keith,

German a/c and personnel losses have been documented in books on the Western Campaign and the Battle of Britain by British author Peter Cornwell in his After the Battle series. German fighter, bomber and Stuka operations during the Polish Campaign (Sept, 1939) have been well documented by Marius Emmerling, but in Polish, not English. I can't speak for the entire war period, but for the Western Campaign (May-June, 1940) and the so-called Battle of Britain (July-Oct., 1940), the problem has been the lack of comprehensive source material on the German side in English for many of the unit actions. The story of the WC and BoB has not been thoroughly told from the German side because few (except for the Polish Campaign) of the Luftwaffe unit diaries (KTBs) and mission records for that period have survived. A large amount of information still exists but it is fragmented and has to be assembled from a lot of different sources, much of which are not yet available in English. That is what the Eagles over Europe (EOE) Project (see permanent post at the top of this Luftwaffe board) is all about. Through many sources, a large number of translators, researchers and experts (at least 50) are pulling all this information on the daily air actions for 1939-40 together, and recreating in great detail what took place on both sides each day. The records will never be complete for all air actions--too much was lost or destroyed in the war, but the resolution of detail as to what happened is being greatly improved upon by the researchers affiliated with this project. Great things are happening but it takes time and a lot of resource dedication by many people to make this happen. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, in his monumental series, Dr. Jochen Prien and his team of researchers has done excellent summaries in German of day fighter operations in all theaters for the period 1939-43, and are working forward from there. Prien and his team have also done detailed books on JG3, 27, 53 and 77, some volumes of which are available in English. Erik Mombeec and Jean-Louis Roba have done two volumes on the history of JG2, at least the first of which is available in English. Donald L. Caldwell has done several detailed books on the operations of JG26, and has just completed a two-volume work on the Defense of the Reich. The Bf110 participation in the two major 1940 campaigns has been nicely covered in English by John Vasco and Peter Cornwell, and Vasco has published the story of ErprGr210 during the BoB about as completely as any German air unit can probably ever be done. He's also done a very good history of ZG1 later in the war. Historical summaries of all the major German bomber and Stuka units have been recently published in English by Larry de Zeng (Henry L. de Zeng IV) and Doug Stankey (Douglas G. Stankey). Chris Goss has done two excellent books, one on German fighter and the other on bomber operations over Britain, as well as other books on maritime operations that provide a lot of first person accounts. He's also done an excellent account of one German fighter squadron, 1./JG53, and an opposing British fighter squadron during the BoB. Belgian author Peter Taghon has done a comprehensive and recent two-volume work on Lehrsgeschwader 1 in German. There are also a number of German bomber unit histories of varying quality and completeness that have been published in German over the years by various authors, including Ulf Balke's excellent history of KG2 and another earlier work on KG100. In English, Alfred Price's books on 18 August 1940 and 15 September 1940 are to be particularly recommended for coverage of both sides of the action. In French, one of the main researchers is Arnaud Gillet, who has published several volumes on the WC of 1940. So there is stuff out there, but quite a bit of it isn't accessible to non-German, French or Polish speaking readers.

Regards,