[Larry Hickey]

Larry,

Very helpful. However, when you look at the two places on a map, St Aubin doesn't really appear that much closer to the battle front over England than Carpiquet-Caen. If bomber escort missions are being flown anywhere from the Weymouth area to Brighton, including Portsmouth, then Caen would be closer that St. Aubin-Thiberville, which would seem to indicate there would be no advantage to "tanking up" at the latter AF. For operations east of Brighton and into the Channel narrows from Hastings to Margate, including Dover, then there would be some advantage to "tanking up" at SA-T. It seems like we really need more information on where the unit was actually operating to make sense of what was really happening.

While we're resolving this, the conventional LW reference sources, including on the internet, indicate that I/ZG2 was based at "Amiens-Glissy" during most of the Battle of Britain:. This includes on P.76 of the Vasco/Cornwell book "Zerstörer," which lists that base as the location where I./ZG2 was situated for the launch of the campaign against Britain.

Although the conventional sources have the unit during most of the Battle of Britain at "Amiens-Glissy". Gerhard Stemmer says "I have no reference that I./ZG 2 was at Amiens at any time..."

Gerhard lists the unit bases during the BoB as:

1) Caen-Carpiquet from 21.07.40 - 06.08.40
2) St Aubin-Thiberville from 06.08.40 - 28.08.40
3) Berck-sur-Mer from 08-28.40 - 17.09.40
4) Toussus le Noble from 17.08.40 -25.98.40.

At this point the unit moved to Vaerlöse, near Copenhagen, Denmark, and were adsorbed into EZGr to convert to night fighters.

As noted earlier, Gerhard is using FB and unit loss locations for his information. I have no idea where the "Amiens-Glissy" info is coming from. Can you or anyone else shed light on this discrepancy?

If you plot the above bases out on a map, Berck-sur-Mer moved the unit considerably NE up the Channel coast where it would be in an excellent position to conduct escort missions to the London area. This could certainly be an "Absprunghafen" for the unit. The move in mid-September to Toussus le Noble, which is just WSW of Paris, withdraws the unit from the immediate Channel coast, indicating that the unit was no longer conducting operations in support of the Battle of Britain after mid-September, and it was soon headed towards disbandment and rebirth as a night fighter unit just a little over a week later. Is that how you interpret the information? The Vasco/Cornwell book: "Zerstörer" P. 196 states: "7th September witnessed the swansong of Vollbracht's ZG2, whose survivors were all too soon adsorbed into the growing Nachtjagd..."

Who can add to this discussion? I really need to pin down where I./ZG2 was based during the Western Campaign and the Battle of Britain. Were some of the places recorded by Gerhard "Absprunghafen,' and not the unit's primary bases?