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Old 9th October 2017, 17:04
Peter Cook Peter Cook is offline
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Battle of Britain Claims, 32 Squadron, July 10 1940

Can anyone help me to sort out the claims submitted by 32 Squadron on July 10 1940? F/O Humpherson flying as No. 1 Green Section, submitted an ‘unconfirmed’ claim for a Do 215 (actually a Do 17Z of KG2) at 1340 hours (Combat Report, AIR 50/16/14).
Sgt. Pearce flying as No. 3 Green Section attacked a Do 215 (Do 17Z) at the same time and submitted a Combat Report (AIR 50/16/19) without stating the nature of the enemy casualty, except for ‘E/A last seen over mid-channel at 3,000 ft more or less, gliding at 105-110 mph.

The 32 Squadron ORB Form 541 for July 10 (AIR 27/360/22) states that “Green Section led by P/O. Humpherson followed by his section attacked a Do 215 The Do 215 was hit and rear turret silenced; Sgt. Pearce followed to mid-Channel where Do 215 had dropped to 3,000 feet”. This seems to imply that it was the same aircraft.

However, the published accounts of these claims are listed as follow:

1) John Foreman (RAF Fighter Command Victory Claims, 2003) has Humpherson destroying a Do 17, while Pearce is shown as ‘sharing’ a Do 17 shared destroyed with S/Lt Bulmer – who was not in Green Flight.

2) Simon Parry (Battle of Britain Combat Archive Volume 1, 2015) shows the same claims, presumably because Foreman is the RAF and Luftwaffe Claims authority for this wonderful set of books.

I can’t locate any combat claims for Bulmer in the National Archives, which may be because he was a Fleet Air Arm pilot, although there are Combat reports in the archive for S/Lt Blake of 19 Squadron, who was also a Fleet Air Arm pilot.

3) Brian Cull (Battle for the Channel, the First Month of the Battle of Britain, 2017) shows Humpherson, Pearce, and Sgt. Bayley – not Bulmer – sharing a single Do 215 probable. Bayley was the 3rd member of Green Section during the combat, but his Combat Reports (AIR 50/16/3) do not include an account for July 10th.

Can anyone help to clear this up? Is there an ‘official’ source for these claims that I am missing somewhere?
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