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Old 9th September 2021, 14:13
Adriano Baumgartner Adriano Baumgartner is offline
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Re: Info required He 111 (7A+CH) lost 12.03.40

Robert,

Nice news, the time of crash.

But, there are interesting considerations here. They were on a reconaissance sortie and the sunset in March "may be" (am guessing) around 17-18hs. Considering that the Ju 88 A-4 do have something of around 4-5 hours of autonomy (I know some flights with underwing fuel tanks of 900 liters of more than 8 hours total flight time); it seems weird they would take-off by the end of the day to return by night on a recon sortie...unless they did have auxiliary fuel tanks under the wings...so they would have more drag and weight to deal with.

If they took off by the end of the day, wiht auxiliary fuel tanks...around 16hs to photograph objectives with shadows...they could return up to midnight. The time of crash at around 22hs do fit nicely here, BUT we most know if they did have the auxiliary fuel tanks.

It is unknown to me, if the Germans did have the capacity of photographing by night with the aids of dropping flares, something that some RAF units did, lately (44) in the war...69 Squadron for instance.

A nice topic to dig further....
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