[ChrisM]

Thanks very much for that, Franek. I now have an idea of the true origins of the name. As far as I can tell, it seems a fairly unusual one, or at least in Luftwaffe circles.

What I was doing in my summary of Flakowski’s life was to repeat a "joke" which might have originated from the man himself or was the creation of the American interviewer, Harry Flannery. Flannery says: "My man…..was Captain Burchard Flakowski. The name was an unusual one for a bomber pilot since flak in German means "anti-aircraft" and the ski on the end of a name means "son of". Thus the name of my interviewer was, appropriately enough, translatable as: Burchard, son of Anti-Aircraft."

Perhaps "nearly translatable" would have been a better way of expressing it!

Chris