[Frank Olynyk]

The German LuftGaukommando collected information on crashed enemy aircraft and captured Allied aircrew. At the end of the war this material was captured, intact, I believe. It was divided into three parts; one part on American losses, one part on RAF/Commonwealth losses, and one part on Soviet losses; and each part was handed over to the corresponding government. It is my understanding that the RAF/Commonwealth material is still held by the Air Historical Branch, and is not open to the public. Whether the Soviet material is open to the public I have no idea. The US material is available in NARA II (Archives II) in College Park, Maryland. It is in Record Group 242, and consists of probably over 500 boxes. AV records refer to captured Americans, mostly bombers, from France and Germany. J refers to captured American fighter pilots. ME refers to captured Americans in the MTO area. These records are the original German forms. After each of these sections are translations into English. All of these reports are generally on very flimsy paper, requiring careful handling. In addition, a large amount of the LuftGauKommando records are found in the corresponding MACR file, which are also at College Park, but only available to the public on microfiche cards (3 MACRs per fiche). Due to the great interest in the MACRs it was felt that excessive handling of the MACRs would cause damage.

There is a paper index to the names in the LuftGauKommando records, which is not online.

Enjoy!

Frank.