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Originally Posted by Dan History
Hello Nick,
Not to sidetrack the thread, but can you confirm how many German aircraft were lost that night? You wrote in Kampfflieger Volume Four that "Three I./KG 77 aircraft were missing from the first attacking group; from the second, III./KG 77 emerged minus five of its Ju 88s and I./ZG 1 also lost a Ju 88 C. In the third element, no fewer than seven aircraft of III./KG 26 were lost, five of them flown by crews on their first operation." That would make a total of 16 aircraft lost, but you also mentioned that a shadower had been shot down earlier by French Airacobras, so were there other aircraft losses?
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The 16 Ju 88s were the losses reported from the attacking force in Luftflotte 3's after-action report (and another seven broke off early with technical problems).
The lost shadower isn't included in that report but in another from Fliegerdiv. 2:
Recce: of the 13 recce aircraft operating from 3 degrees 30 minutes west at irregular intervals, with main emphasis on night recce, only three brought in correct results for conduct of attack, two by day (one P/R) and one by night (with apparatus). Five aircraft broke off task before reaching objective owing technical trouble. One aircraft missing. One further aircraft shot down in sea off Perpignan by Allied aircraft. Remaining aircraft brought back no interpretable results.
If you want to see the ULTRAs that the account in the book was based on, they are KV 3786, KV 3920 and KV 3921. All are on file DEFE3/155 and can be viewed or downloaded free at the National Archives website.
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You have a private message from me about an administrative matter.
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Which I've passed to the site administrator. John and I moderate the discussions, powers over the workings of the site are way beyond us!