[Simon Trew]

Chris, Tim,

Thanks for these thoughtful and helpful responses. I'm most grateful. I thought one would have the EK 2 if one also had the EK 1, but I'm grateful for the confirmation.

I do apologise if some of my points appear naïve or not as well-informed as they might be. I've spent the last 30 years working mostly on land warfare topics (as a War Studies lecturer at The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst). My PhD was about the resistance movements in wartime Yugoslavia (not a huge amount of air power there) and my first degree was in International Relations (which I also taught for a while at Keele University). None of this is necessarily the best preparation for a foray into Luftwaffe operations in 1944. But I'm genuinely interested in the topic - which has grown out of my main focus on the 1944 Normandy campaign - and trying to get my head around some interesting material found in ADI(K) and other intelligence sources. In that respect, I must again express my gratitude to those who made my membership of this forum possible, as well as those who are taking the trouble to reply to my postings.

The point about EK 1 and 2 being "commonplace" is intriguing, and begs questions. Was this because the awards were "easy" to get? Or was it because the things required to get them were within the compass of those who went through the selection process to get in positions to earn the awards in the first place? Or was it because those responsible for writing up the recommendations found the right 'format' for doing so (in this respect, I'm reminded of the spectacular differences indicated by one of the appendices in the First United States Army Report on Operations for June and July 1944, which shows that some divisions - 1st US ID being a classic example - secured spectacularly more medals of certain types for their soldiers than divisions that were new to combat, and who hadn't quite worked out what combination of nouns, verbs and adjectives were most likely to get the desired results)? or was it largely about inter-service (or intra-service) politics?

I guess an obvious observation is that if the medals were 'easy' to get, then why did quite a few airmen not have them?

In my various attempts to number-crunch stuff, I'm partly influenced by ideas developed in Mullers' 'Elite des Fuhrers' - a book about German land forces who fought in Normandy, but which deploys some interesting analytical tools.

Anyway, enough rambling from me. I'll keep on plugging away at trying to 'profile' the Steinbock airmen and continue to appreciate the feedback.

Bye for now,

Simon