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Re: KG51 losses on 23 August 1942.
Hi, Nikita!
Thanks for the information.
With regards to your first question about trying to find a number for aircraft that seem to have disappeared without a trace I would dare to say 'yes, it would be possible to do this to a good degree of accuracy, combining records from several sources', and it would be an interesting excercise in my opinion. If you are interested we can start this work together, I will provide you with information for the units of interest. I will PM you with regards to this in a couple of days.
It is also very interesting to see the records you provide with regards to Soviet losses. It would be VERY interesting to do the same with regards to Soviet losses as we are seeing the end to with regards to the German ones, namely entering them in a relational database accessible from the internet. If there is an interest to do this, I can provide a web-based solution which will be integrated with the German losses database.
Juha:
I have not seen any such order, but will do a bit of checking in my files. As the aircraft in case was lost on January 12 1943, this order could be in the remnants of the KTB of the Gefechtsstab of JG 5 i Kemi. It is of interest to note that the Bf of the aircraft Franz Kirchmayer who was wounded in the crash landing has the following text attached to his Namentliche Verlustmeldung (BTW, the Technikmuseum or RLM has got the date wrong... on the NVM it is written 11.1.43 by typewriter, but this is corrected in handwriting to 12.1.43, the same date as listed on the GenQu report.):
Etwa 3 Wochen nicht einsatzfähig, da durch Brennstoffmangel verursachte Notlandung ....
Out of action for about three weeks, wounded in a crash landing due to fuel starvation ...
The loss reason in the GenQu report states: Bauchlandung infolge techn.Mängel. Belly landing due to a technical problem
So I do not know who and what to believe in this case. If a single bullet was found in one of the engines of the aircraft as stated in this thread earlier.. would this suffice to make the aircraft go down? I doubt it, as these aircraft had two engines and were flyable on one of them. Did this bullet hit a fuel line and thus indirectly cause the emergency landing... I do not know and one should probably ask the technical people that investigated the aircraft if this is likely.
For all I know this reported bullet could have made the hole in the cowling of this aircraft on an earlier flight... and Ziegenhagen remember another flight when his aircraft was damaged by AAA.
Who knows... anyone got access to Ziegenhagens full story? Or his logbook?
Regards,
Andreas B
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