[Johannes]

Hi John

I found 102 confirmed claims by 22nd June 1944, don't think there are any missing on the mikrofilms, but numbers 100-102 scored on 1st May 1944 before a break before his next on 9th July 1944, so your "BY 22nd June 1944" is a pivotal date.
Perhaps his 129/130 includes a number of unconfirmed, but often a number is "cast in stone" and duplicated over the decades, I have found this several times when I do have copies of the pilots flugbücher which match the mikrofilms precisely

Lots of totals, and front totals come from Ernst Obermeier's books, which the second edition is a evolution of the first, they really were very good for there time, some biographies are still perfect, but others far different from the truth. I would say he researched well, and met a lot of the pilots/their families. Some totals are a confusion between claims and confirmed, others a confusion between the points system and confirmed. Even perfect work is often "corrupted" during publishing, and as I say becomes "fact, cast in stone", some pilots included unconfirmed in their totals, I guess if they were honest guys they knew they had fallen, some did not know they were unconfirmed, some exaggerated, sometimes the totals come by second party. With Sterr he did not survive the war, I do not think his flugbuch has ever come to light, which leaves prior to the mikrofilms KBT papers and konrades.

Where Obermeier got his Sterr data from I do not know, but looking at other biographies decades ago you would take his word over anybody elses, and I would guess that it is his total given that people have been accepting for fifty years.

Kind regards

Johannes