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Old 6th March 2006, 14:44
Laurent Rizzotti Laurent Rizzotti is offline
Alter Hase
 
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Paris, France
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Laurent Rizzotti will become famous soon enough
Re: A Jagdstaffel pilot in France Feb. 10, 1944

Just to complete the above posts.

JG 105 was not a frontline fighter unit but an operationnal training unit (like all JG between 101 and 112), that is the last step in training before going to frontline units.

These units used a mixture of outdated fighters of German, French and Italian origin and of advanced training aircraft. The NAA 57 in which your man was lost was of the second category. It was a version of the American well-known trainer T-6 Texan (story and picture here: http://ajbs.com/Anglais/MuseeGB/T-6-...History-UK.htm).

Even if operationnal training units may send fighters against enemy raids in their area, usually flown by the instructors and most advanced trainees, most of the losses they suffered to enemy action were during training flights that were attacked by marauding Allied aircraft, like the Typhoon mentionned above. These attacks became so costly that in spring 1944 most of these units retired from France, where most of them were based, to Germany.

At the time of the above loss, JG 105 was based on the airfields of Chartres and Bourges, both SW of Paris.
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