Quote:
Originally Posted by Stig Jarlevik
All
From the forum I notice there is a Swedish speaking Swiss Gentlemen who has done research down in Freiburg. Among documents relating to Naval stuff he has located some papers which more or less conclusively clinch Fw Paul Schalk to the two shoot downs of S 16A 3335 and 3304.
Cheers
Stig
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Being the "Gentleman"in question, I'd like to give some more information regarding this incident over the Baltic sea.
Since april 1944 the "Seekommandant Libau" registered with some irritation regularly performed enemy flights outside the Libau coast - each day the same hours and more or less the same route. They asked for help and got it from Luftflottenkommando 1 which sent a "Tag-Jagdschwarm" II./JG 5 to Libau-Grobin, airfields in Latvia. Possibly only three pilots were sent - Oblt. Theo Weissenberger, Fw Paul Schalk and Uffz Zacharias.(App 1)
Then, as we've seen, on the 14 and 15 of May the two swedish Capronis were shot down by Paul Schalk - clearly shown in the naval documents I found in Freiburg/Brsg.
Then we have this national markings thing. Paul Schalk wrote in his first report and later by the hearing, that he attacked from behind and
underneath, but mentioned only the markings on the body of the Caproni: Three yellow crowns on blue and a big white 14 on the tail fin. Nothing about wing markings.
In the belief that this must be a russian aircraft with false national markings, he didn't hesitate to shoot it down...and with the same belief he also took down the Caproni the following day - all the more as the "enemy" planes moved as if they were trying to escape...! By the hearing a couple of days later - at a time when they all knew those were swedish planes - Schalk came up with some other excuses, a.o. he himself knew the swedish markings should have been three
blue crowns on
white ground...!
Anyway he got away with it in the end, no problems...
Btw, the german Luftwaffenkommando tried to block the news of the second Caproni shooting. It was to be seen as a spy thing. "Don't tell the Swedes anything about (our involvement)"!!(App 2)
Hans K