[Johannes]

Hi Guys

Am still looking into the excessive periods of the Stab of first and second Gruppe JG54. It would appear to be not to be all, with the second Gruppe just Hans Hahn and Erich Rudorffer. As we have established most often the Gruppenkommandeur flew with only a single wingman, in Hahn's case he borrowed Max Stotz from one of his Staffels, with Rudorffer he had his own official wingman Kurt Tangermann. All the other Gruppenkommandeur seem honest.
With the First Gruppe we have Hans Philipp using his own personal wingamn Reinhardt, previous to this period both seem to be claiming unspectacularily, then this changes very abruptly together to spectacular claiming. With Nowotny it's different he borrows his former wingmen from staffels within his Gruppe to continue his spectacular claiming/over-claiming. Again the other Gruppenkommandeur seem honest.

I have heard bad things about Franz Eisenach, but cannot link him to anybody in collusion! As with Wilhelm Batz, though possible there are links with other top scorers within 5./JG52 during 1943, he claims spectacular though they are during 1944 with the stab.III./JG52 were made without any collusion, in fact he was the only guy claiming with the staff, and I cannot find any link between him and any staffel member/members of III./JG52, yet research would suggest, or rather prove that he was over-claiming, but though we know he did it, we do know know how, certainly not in the way of the JG54 guys.

Barkhorn did use sometimes regular wingmen, but at other times he flew with random wingmen, being a Gruppenkommandeur he had the opportunity, but as we have established, not the inclination Guess we could say about Philipp is that he had the inclination, but no opportunity until he became Gruppenkommandeur.

But how do you go about it even with the opportunity that being a Gruppenkommandeur brings, was there a secret handshake or something? How did Hans Hahn know he could use Stotz, Stotz's claims prior to Hahn being Kommandeur though large in number were not spectacular, then abruptly they became so. Hahn did not know Stotz before becoming Kommandeur.

With Nowotny it's slightly different, that being that he could fly within a larger group, at least Schwarm size within his staffel and they all four over-claim. I suspect that perhaps he was shy about approaching as Kommandeur to suggest the back-scratching plan, so he just used his old over-claiming staffel friends of Gerhard Loos, Anton Dobele and Karl Schnorrer.

Hans Philipp take Reinhardt with him to JG1, bu there they flew as much larger groups, thus the opportunity was not there!

Keep well

Johannes