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Re: Reinhard Heydrich air victories?
Hi,
for the sake of fairness I should stress out first that the number of Pokryshkin´s kills is not a quote from Bergström but my remark only. I know Bykov credits Pokryshkin only with 46+6 but as valuable and informative as his book may be it is not flawless (the same holds for Bergström´s books of course). Pokryshkin´s number of kills is uncertain and different Russian sources give great variety of his final score ranging from 52 to 81.
As for the combat discussed in this thread no definitive answer will probably ever be known. The description of it in Bernád, Karlenko and Roba book From Barbarossa to Odessa part 1 is different from Bergström´s and is more traditional in the way that it credits Heydrich´s aircraft to AAA. On the other hand Pokryshkin describes the combat in at least two of his memoir books exactly as Bergström.
As for the propaganda issue I do not know what Franek had in mind since from my point of view hardly any author gave more sober and unbiased description of air war over Eastern front than Bergström in his books. But that might be just my opinion so maybe we should let the readers decide.
And finally I do not know if Bergström speaks Russian but I would be very surprised should he not have at least basic knowledge of Russian language given the quanta of information he had to go through for his books.
Jan
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