Quote:
Originally Posted by Amrit1
There are five references to Baumeister of 459th Squadron in the third volume of Shores' "Bloody Shambles". If you would like the relevant entries, I could copy them out. And I think his claims were:
one Ki 21 destroyed on the ground (4th April 1944)
one Ki 43 probably destroyed on the ground (shared with Lt Wood - 23 April 1944)
one Ki 43 destroyed on the ground (shared with Lt Goodrich - 15 May 1944)
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Thanks ... any info will be valuable. I have a ton of documents coming my way from Bill's sister. The historian in me can't wait to dig through those! Further information convinces me that there's something to the story. Why would a German POW come out of Russia with an American pilot's name? One of the documents coming to me is a transcript of the interview with the German former POW. His sister is convinced that not only is the name correct, but the description as well.
Of course, with the passage of time nobody's saying Bill's going to come walking out of the trees one day, but it would be nice to know the truth of what happened.
The Ki-43 damaged claim I refer to was his only
aerial claim. Source: Olynyk.
Wade