Quote:
Originally Posted by Jesters-Ink
...what percentage of certainty would you place on the triple chevron being the Works number you have there? And is there any chance of finding out the pilots name at all? ...
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Well, when the marking and WNr. and location appear on a document, you can be relatively certain. I use the wiggle-room of 'relatively' because a typo can occur to anyone, and even the "official" documents and loss lists contain them. Transposed numbers are not uncommon. This is ANOTHER thing that makes our db so useful, its sorting ability -- but it also reveals sometimes-frustrating anomalies as well...
Now as to determining the pilot's name: who an aircraft is prepared for and who flies it are not necessarily the same pilot. When examining logbooks, one can observe that a pilot may test-fly or transfer an aircraft for a single flight; in other instances he may use the same airframe for months at a time. Lacking Muencheberg's logbook, there can be no confirmation that he was flying this machine on that date. Here's a perfect Desert example: Schroer was the Staffelkapitaen of the 8./JG 27. He was photographed with "schwarze 1" in the late summer of 1942 (I'm not refering here to his later "rote 1" that he was flying on Rhodes). But on the day he claims six P-40s, he's flying "schwarze 6" -- see what I mean?
This does not, probably, provide you with the absolute certainty you hoped for, but as you venture further down the road of history, certainties seem to become less frequent. I tend to look at much of history as "What I THOUGHT I knew." Now the good news is, maybe someday another piece of the puzzle presents itself. The bad news is very much of Luftwaffe documentation is gone -- but that makes the hunt all the more intriguing! As Jim reminded us, remember 20 years ago. We're much richer today -- we have a board like this one!
HTH, GRM