[Larry deZeng]

Originally Posted by Kapper

Larry,

I understand. When I first started researching the Luftwaffe as a youngster, I made a lot of notes without referencing the source (It’s a hobby to me – I’m not a professional researcher). Being on the other side of the world, accessing primary sources is not easy, so I tend to rely on secondary sources (books / internet etc). However, using such sources has created many questions (and conflict in data) so I began taking notes of the source, but this has slowed me down considerably. Also, it’s all became on big mess with referenced and unreferenced data (which I’m trying to correct as I go) therefore I’m currently trying to put it all into some logical order. A very time consuming task, so I imagine that the task you and Doug have set yourself would not be easy.

Anyway, thanks for your efforts. I find Doug and your work a very useful source, so keep up the good work.

Regards,

Craig…

Right on, Craig. It's like a 5,000 piece jigsaw puzzle of a 4 square mile section of open ocean. As you know, some 95% of the Luftwaffe's records were destroyed between August 1944 (the Potsdam raid that destroyed much of the archives there) and the first week of May 1945 when most of what was left was intentionally burned in compliance with Hermann Goering's long-standing orders. Only bits and pieces survived. That means we researchers are forced out of necessity to use the postwar published material and therein comes the rub. Veteran A says so-and-so was Staka while Veteran B says no, it was so-and-so. The only recourse seems to be the Karteikarten and/or the copied WASt resources in the French military archive. So unscrambling these Staka/Stafü conundrums for the fighter units where the positions changed with such frequency can be a tedious challenge but, with persistence, a rewarding one.

Larry

P.S. if BA-MA Freiburg ever relented, all 700,000 of those cards front and back would cost an estimated $700,000 U.S. for BA-MA's jobber, Selke, to copy. Definitely out of my reach!