[Larry Hickey]

Ed,

1) The scissor a/c is Bf109E-1 Y12+ of 3./JG27, a very well-known force-landing on 30 August 1940. The late Michael W. Payne located many photos of this incident, and its subsequent salvage and public display. He may have donated copies of these, which we have in the EoE Collection, to the IWM. Or these may have been press photos of that a/c taken at the time, which we almost surely have.

2) The EoE Photo DB collection contains somewhere around a thousand images of German a/c down in Britain during 1940, and there are few photos known to exist that are not in our collection. Moreover, from German sources, we often have photos of the German planes, known to have crashed, prior to their loss on operations over Britain. These came from the personal collections of several of the best known researchers in the field, some of whom have spent fifty or more years acquiring and assembling this material. However, from time to time photos previously unknown to us have surfaced, almost always from private collections, and these are what we're mainly looking for.

The a/c of Uffz Max Reiss is one of the notable ones absent from our collection, but there are others, for which I'm working up a post to ask about. The Isle of Wight is a particular problem with several Luftwaffe a/c force-landed there for which no photos are known to exist. So, if anyone has or knows of any photos of German a/c down on the I.O.W. during 1940, even smashed wrecks, please contact me. Copies of press photos from events there are unlikely to be in the I.W.M. Collection, but I'm always prepared to be pleasantly surprised. I believe that what the IWM has partially posted on line (so far without images) is the same collection I looked at 44 years ago when I first visited Britain to do research.

Regards,