[Johannes]

Hi Michel

Without being specific on this. The mikrofilms basically have five types:-

!= a typed-out mikrofilm listing all claims for a specific Staffel, but only until the daily mikrofilms begin.

2= Daily mikrofilms listing all claims on each of the fronts(East and West) these begin for some units(including JG52) on 23/07/1942, the latest units joined this method in the Summer of 1943, they continue until October 1944 when JG5 no longer uses this method, and the last date....an incomplete one has just one claim in the west for 01/01/1945. January 1944 in the West claims are missing. Certain SG units claims are sporadic when they were most active in Spring/Summer 1944.

3= Staffel mikrofilm listing date and time only, these are generally run current with the above, but do have the January 1944 in the West claims.

4= This is like the second type, but listing all claims on the daily bases for all units, but only A.S.M/v.n.e-a.s.m claims from the beginning until the daily mikrofilm claims start in 1942.

5= This is a personal listing in alphabetical order of all claims by a pilot, but like the third type listing date and time only, but the only pieces to survive are those with letters Kr-L, and then excluded from the list are claims missing from first type mikrofilm. This mikrofilm's coverage ends in June 1944.

Now to be specific. The first type of mikrofilm i.e the typed-out per Staffel for 15./JG52 has not survived, moreover the secon type i.e daily entries didn't begin until 29/10/1943......they didn't claim between this date and 08/06/1943, then these daily mikrofilm entries cease on 28/02/1944 which would be the last claim before the unit was dis-banded.

In existence is a 15./JG52 dairy written during the war, which lists all claims, but in a blatant act of legal piece making the U.S.A destroyed the library they were housed in and half the volumes were destroyed. The destruction of this none-military target is likely to have been opportunist as another target(again none-military) was the Chinese embassy which was destroyed twice....killing it's occupants. Can't see a motive for destroying the library, I can only image it was to destroy history itself. I don't think these missing volumes were ever copied, hopefully they were but just have not yet come to light.

Hope this is a good explanation.

Keep well

Johannes