[cobrahistorian]

Hi all,

I'm a little late to the game on this one, but I've been researching the actions of 24 June 44 at length. My hunch is Lungulescu was downed by Lt. Cecil Dean or Lt. Harold Wolfe, both from the 325th's 317th FS and both who claimed an "IAR-80" in the Bucharest area that day. Since no IAR-80s were lost that day they may have simply seen the Romanian insignia and assumed they were IAR's and not 109s.

Having been through the majority of US documentation on this fight, I'm interested to see the German and Romanian records on it. Looking at the overall Axis losses that day (8 109s shot down by P-51s and a few more by B-24s) they match up fairly closely with the 325th's claims for that day (5 confirmed and 3 probables). The 82nd FG claimed an additional 3 Me109s west of Sofia, Bulgaria and as has been stated, the 31st FG claimed a single 109, but it was my understanding that this airplane was not over Bucharest, but significantly south of there. I'll need to double check the 31st FG records when I'm back at the AF History Office next week.

Thanks!

Jon