[Peter Cornwell]

Alexis,

I can offer you very little help I’m afraid. You are already well aware of the parlous state of the No.615 Squadron ORB so, in the absence of any reliable sources of information available at that time, details of the loss of MURTON-NEALE as published in my BoFrT&N (2007) were based entirely upon Brian CULL’s earlier work on the subject, Twelve Days In May (1995). His original sources are not known to me. CWGC records did at least confirm that MURTON-NEALE came down near Courrière, south-east of Namur, & it was documented that MARCHFELDER (plus two un-named pilots of II./ZG1) filed claim(s) for ‘Spitfire(s)’ on 13 May 1940 - but with no time nor location specified as far as I am aware. Significantly maybe, MARCHFELDER’s unpublished personal account ‘Pilots, Saints, & Sinners’ made no mention of the claim and in retrospect perhaps I should have given this more credence. One possible source of information on II./ZG1 would be the wartime publication Flieger-Ritter-Helden by Benno WUNDSHAMMER (1942) a war-reporter attached to the unit. Copies of this can still be found on the www.