[F19Gladiator]

I find the 1./JG 26 emblem discussion interesting.

I would not discard Mr. Axel Urbanke’s article as easy as Larry Hickey suggests. If having good photos of the emblem available it would be interesting to see them posted here, Larry!
A picture of the lapel-pin would also be interesting to see.

Sidney, I am also posting the part of the photo of “White 6” showing the “Eagle-emblem” as published in Mr. Urbanke’s article. The artist’s impression reproduction of the emblem in the article I refer to and posted earlier, is obviously based on this photo. What other references Mr. Urbanke has used is not mentioned in the article, neither his source of the Bavarian “Wolperdinger” theory. We better invite Axel to explain by himself!

Some Wolperdinger or Wolpertinger background here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolpertinger

The mythical creature can obviously show a lot of variation which is obvious after some minutes of “Googling”!

Part of photo from Mr. Urbanke’s article showing the emblem:


Part of previously posted photo of “White 2” and the emblem:


Studying this photo and the photo from eBay I have posted does in my opinion not represent a typical eagle. The proportions are strange and in particular the body part shows no resemblance with an eagle in both the posted examples. There are many examples of eagles used in unit emblems and heraldry since at least the days of the Roman Empire – But this emblem does not immediately switch on the “Eagle recognition mode” in my brain, despite having been very close to real live eagles several times in nature.

Before discarding the theory presented in Mr. Urbanke’s article it would be interesting to see more photos. Anyone?

I was initially only quoting from Mr. Urbankes article and I am not defending the “Wolperdinger” theory in absurdum here. It would however be interesting to dig a bit deeper, as the two photos I have posted here indicates that an alternative interpretation could find some support by the fact that neither of them are particularly good representations of an eagle.

Being a “Wolperdinger” inspired emblem or not, in my eyes it is not a typical eagle, and if it is intended to represent an eagle it would be interesting to know what had inspired to this strange variant.

Br/Gladiator