[Jim P.]

According to Stackpole's own website, the 2-volume JG 26 War Diary's were printed in 2012. Given that, I would think that they are just reprints of the originals. If Don Caldwell had done any significant updates since the original publication of these one would think there would have been some buzz amongst the community.

I met and talked with Mr. Caldwell via, the now long defunct, LW Circle and at a meeting of same in Omaha almost 30 years ago. His extensive research included meeting with and interviewing a number of the surviving pilots and obtaining copies of quite a number of their logbooks. He was my introduction into the use of those documents as an instrument of research - kindly allowing me and a couple of buddies to "abscond" with those that he had with him at the time for an evening to take as many notes as we could. It was a long night.

You may refer to his work as being "long in the tooth", but I seriously doubt any author since has had that sort of access to the surviving vets - most of whom are now deceased. I think the only author, or team of authors, who have really done anything of significance on JG 26 since then, though mostly through operational movements, losses and claims, is quite likely Mr. Prien and his team through their Jagdfliegerverbande series. Beyond that, and the documents of course, there is almost no one left to tell the stories.

One point that should be made of the surviving logbooks for JG 26 though is that many of them are:
1) available through the usual trading circles.
AND
2) quite a number of them include both aircraft code and WNr. for the individual sorties.
This makes them both extremely useful, and rather rare as these things go.