[sidney]

Thank you for the additional notes.

The Gruppe Eberhardt is the title that refers to the German fighter entity in Spain over a brief period of time in September, October and, say, first half of November 1936. I have only come across it in the aforementioned E.R. Hooton's book Luftwaffe at War – Gathering Storm 1933 – 1939. I was hoping to find out about more references that would confirm it. Thus far I found none.

If I remember correctly, in their book The Legion Condor 1936-1939, Karl Ries and Hans Ring refer to the same entity over the same period simply as the Jagdstaffel of the German volunteers in Spain.

It seems to me that your reference to Jagdstaffel Eberhardt can be dated to the onset of its operations (i.e., 23 August 1936), although taking into account losses in accidents and combat losses (Oblt. Trautloft, 30 August 1936), it could not have been more than three aircraft strong at any given time until a still unspecified date in September* 1936, when the additional batch of the He 51 aircraft was delivered, and the entity actually became a Staffel strong (i.e., 12 or more aircraft on strength).

For the aforementioned period I use the term Kette Eberhardt. This reference I believe, because I do not have their book at hand, I found in the aforementioned Ries/Ring book on the subject.