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Old 26th March 2010, 13:05
Laurent Rizzotti Laurent Rizzotti is offline
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Crimea, 26 March 1944

Hello,

Today I searched the fate of Kapitan Alexander Filippovich Lavrenov of 291 IAP, an ace and Hero of the Soviet Union killed on 26 March 1944 over Crimea.

I found two very different versions of his fate on the web:

_ http://allaces.ru/p/episode.php?id=421 says he was bounced and killed by two Bf 109 after an unsuccessful battle.

_ http://www.peoples.ru/military/aviat...andr_lavrenov/ gives a far more heroic view of his demise, telling he died in a taran while trying to save another Soviet pilot.

The problem is that the second source is:
1) really like a piece of Soviet-era propaganda
2) full of error (Volkov was not commander of 812 IAP, but of 274 IAP, 278 IAD. By the way neither 291 IAP nor 812 were in 278 IAD, but in 265 IAD)

The strange thing about the second link is that, contrary to most Soviet stories, it indicates that the Soviet suffered heavy losses (ten fighters) and due to an error of the command (sending young inexperienced pilots in an area where JG 52 appeared in strength).

The allaces.ru website seems more reliable to me, and his view of Lavrenov's death seems to come from a combat report. I checked this site to find losses of 265 and 278 IAD this day, and found the names of 5 killed pilots:

278 IAD (15, 43, 274 IAP):
15 IAP Dmitriev, Ivan Ilyich
43 IAP Grigorovsky, Viktor Trofimovich
274 IAP Vakhramey, B A
274 IAP Volchkov, Nikolai G. (IAP commander)

265 IAD (291, 402, 812 IAP):
291 IAP Lavrenov, Alexander Filippovich

On the German side, 9 claims are known this day in this area:
2 Yak (-1 and -7) by 5./JG 52 at 0916-0923 hrs
1 Airacobra by Lt August Lambert of II./SG 2 at 1325 hrs
1 Yak-9 by Lt Walter Wolfrum of 5./JG 52 at 1402 hrs
5 Yak-1 by 4. and 5./JG 52 between 1547 and 1608 hrs

That is all I have, and now are my questions:

1) in March 1944 in Crimea, how much time difference was it between the hours used by German and Soviet air forces. I know that in years before, there was for example a 2 hour difference between time used by JG 54 and KBF pilots, using probably respectively Central European Time and Moscow time.

2) is there any reality in the 10 losses of 278 IAD, and their reasons ?

3) the book "Dragons..." telling the history of 812 IAP in the first part of the war (the full title escaping me now) has been published in English, if the second part covering 1944 exists in Russian, I would be interested to know what happened to this unit this day.

Thanks in advance

Laurent
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