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Re: Gottfried Dulias
Dear Ruy,
although I have followed this thread from time to time so far I did not feel inclined to enter the discussion as I simply don't have the time to dive any deeper in this matter for instance by contacting the BA at Aachen Kornelimünster to check the personal file of said Leutnant Dulias. And quite frankly from what I can see on this thread it doesn't trigger any bit of of interest to spend my time looking for information on a Lt. Dulias.
From what I have gathered so far I can only offer my personal and private opinion and that is that I don't believe a word of the "career" of this Leutnant; may be he was with the Luftwaffe and even JG 53 as some part of the ground staff and may be he was a Russian POW but so far I have found no piece of information that would lend any credibility to his story.
Having spoken to many former fighter pilots in my time it strikes me that in his account "Lt." Dulias never mentions any names of his Kommandeur, his Staffelkapitän, his Kaczmarek or his close friends. Nor does he become specific about the unit he flew with - I can hardly remember any of the veterans I have spoken with in the past who didn't recall what Staffel he belonged to because the Staffel was their - if I may put it this way - home and family.
Then it strikes me that the locations where he - according to his story - saw combat do not really match with JG 53. No part of JG 53 was ever stationed at Aachen and it would be very odd to name Aachen instead of the Feldflugplätze and Einsatzhäfen from which III./JG 53 did actually operate during this time. There were other prominent places closer to the respective airfields. North of Budapest doesn't convince me either. If he were with that unit he must have been first with III./JG 53 and later with I./JG 53. I don't know of many pilots who were posted in this direction during this time.
Two Spitfires in the West without any further information - how to comment on that. Three I-16 Ratas in the East in January / February 1945 seems totally unbelieveable and as such was hardly a question of mis-identification; if it were a case of the latter, then other pilots of I./JG 53 would also have claimed Ratas around this time which in fact they didn't. Or were those Ratas reserved for Lt. Dulias ?
So at the end of the day to me it all appears to be a badly pieced together fabricated "combat career" the like of which we have seen before. The reaction of "Leutnant" Dulias not to enter into this dicussion and not to offer any tangible proof for his story doesn't really add to his credibility. But, again, this is just my personal point of view and I would not have any problem to make my excuses to Mr. Dulias if he were able to give appropriate substance to his extraordinary exploits.
All the best
Jochen Prien
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