[HGabor]

Nick,

On January 8, 1945 Lipfert downed A-20B-DL, S/N: 41-2937 first with the Lt. Vetlov crew. Her nickname was "За Победу!" - For Victory! - (See her well known photo below, taken in Bulgaria still in the fall of 1944.) She was a single plane, leading the 449th group and by waving the wings tried to pick up the Yak fighter escort from the airfield of Börgönd, Székesfehérvár-S when Lipfert caught her. Exploded mid-air.

Second he shot out A-20G, S/N: 43-21588 from the formation. Only the pilot, Lt. Kruglov bailed out, but hit the vertical stabilizer, lost his consciousness and did not open his parachute. His body was found far away from the plane. The rest 3 went down with the plane.

The third soviet Boston, lost on this mission was S/N: 43-9596, piloted by Lt. Larionov. It was downed by Lipfert's wingman, Sepp Prokoph. This entirely crew survived, but all 8 men in Lipfert's planes died. The soviets collected the bodies and took back for a regiment ceremony and funeral to their base at Madocsa. They were buried there.

As of the engines the soviet mechanical papers wrote them off together in a common list, so it is hard to match them properly to the planes:

43-104269-23
43-104259-23
57293-23
36247-11
43-102944-23
43-155228-23

Since only one was a regular A-20B, R-2600-11 type engine, therefore 41-2937 must have had mixed engines installed. (An A-20B and an A-20G engine at the same time!)

La-5 on March 14, 1945 - Pantelkin, (HSU):

Answer: NO.

Lipfert downed the La-5 at 12:07 PM near Székesfehérvár. Pantelkin was shot down at 15:00 PM local time at Sárkeresztúr in his 17 VA, 295 IAD, 116 IAP La-5FN, S/N: 39212869, engine: 8213627, tactical '69', while protecting 10 (12, but 2 early returned) 136 ShAD IL-2s. He was ambushed from the back by a 'new model Fw 190'. (?) This really could be anything, a Bf 109, or even pure politics to cover the Hero's fatal mistake by a new, fantasy model's superiority. No Doras in Hungary, anyway.

ml.l-t Iozhitskii (л-т Иожицкий, POW) was downed at Székesfehérvár in his La-5FN, S/N: 39211637, engine: 8211279, tactical '37'. His flight of six 17 VA, 295 IAD, 164 IAP La-5s took off from Tököl airfield at 11:45 AM to cover 12 IL-2s in the Székesfehérvár area. This perfectly matches the battle of 12:07 PM, local time!

So Pantelkin was downed by another pilot for sure, NOT by Lipfert. Lipfert downed л-т Иожицкий (POW) for sure.

Rumanian Bf 109G on 25.02.1945 can be just a speculation, as two 5 VA, 513 IAP Yak-9Ts were lost in the same area. Not sure about it.

I hope this clarifies the cases. Cheers,

Gabor