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Old 4th June 2005, 09:12
NickM NickM is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 589
NickM
Me's vs Spits over North Africa: Who were those guys?

It's time for me to ask the perennial question about an first hand account I read in some book who's title I forgot--something about American pilots serving in the RAF...this particular story is a little hazy but the gist of it is: the guy recollecting was one of 8 spitfire pilots patrolling around the time of the El Alamein battles--not sure exactly but DEFINITELY AFTER the death of HJ Marseilles; while on patrol the 8 spits are bounced by TWO extremely well flown Me 109s who down 2 of the spits before the rest even know they're there. The rest of the dogfight is recalled by the witness as the remaining 6 pilots being totally outflown & boxed in by these two pilots, who succeed in shooting down a third Spit & damaging a couple more---in a nutshell, the witness felt that if the Me pilots hadn't either run short of ammo and/or fuel & had to disengage, NONE of the patrol would have survived;

So...the question is: WHO were these two pilots? Given the time it could have been any number of pilots, but probably NOT JG27 experten; I am not sure about JG53 but I THINK that they may have been from JG77...at the time JG77 had flying for it: Munchenberg, Baer, Hackl, Freitag and Reinert among the ones I know...since I can't put my finger on the EXACT date, I am hoping someone 'out there' might either have the book or can make an educated guess as to who these top notch pilots were;

Thanks, ahead of time

NickM
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