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Originally Posted by Flavio
Hi Flying Dutchman,
I made a long research about Plt. Off. Vlotman, due off I am very fond of the top aces of each country involved in the WW2, and, as far as I know, Vlotman is the Duch top scorer (even if he shared the title with TFA Buys) with 4 confirmed kills.
According with "Those Other Eagles" by C.Shores and "de Haviland Mosquito" by M.Bowman, Vlotman gained the following victories all with No 488 Sqn:
04/02/44 04.52 1 Do17 flying Mosquito MkXIII HK367
22/03/44 00.20-00.55 2 Ju88s flying Mosquito MkXIII HK365
20/06/44 02.20 1 Fw190 flying Mosquito MkXIII MM515.
Regarding his personal planes, the information I found are very poor. I also wrote to the Royal Netherlands AF History Unit, but the only photograph they sent me is that one very famous, and several time published, showing Vlotman and his radar operator Wood near their Mosquito with 4 kills on the tail. Any way from this picture is clear visible the last digit of the serial number: "5". The only other information I found is one decal sheet from "Dutch Decal" (number 48016), with a B/W drawing of what is supposed to be Vlotman's personal plane: Z°ME HK365 with 4 kill markings on the tail; the wonderfull photo you quote in your post, showing for the first time (for me of course) Z°ME seems to confirm this B/W profile.
Any way in my opinion the serial number of this plane is more probably MM515 and not HK365; Vlotman infact used HK365 three months before these pictures were made (the plane has 4 kill markings and the D-Day bands, so they were made at the end of June '44), and the first digit of Z°ME seems more likely "MM" than "HK."
I hope these information may help you; do you know if Mr. Vlotman wrote a book about his war memoirs? Please any information about him will be welcome.
Regards
Flavio
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Flavio,
This is my first post on this forum (thanks Dutchman).
What I tell might be shocking: I'm named after mr. Vlotman. He is the uncle of my mother and he is still alive! (he is 91 years) At the moment there are people working on his memoirs (hopefully it will be completed soon).
He scored 4 planes and an unknown number of V1/V2's. To bad he does not want to tell much about the war. For him it is a closed book. Luckely he kept his logbooks and diaries from that period, but he let no one read them. My parents told him that when he dies (and I hope that it will come over 50 years or so) they want to have them so his memorie will never got lost.
I hope this is good information for you for now.
Christiaan Degenkamp