[Franek Grabowski]

Originally Posted by Christer Bergström

Are you telling us that the mere fact that an Allied pilot claimed that he shot down a German fighter at Domfront, is enough to convince you that the German version that Wurmheller collided with his wingman at Alencon is wrong?

I never claimed that Wurmheller was downed by Fleming but that there is such a possibility.

And you don’t mind that the place of Wurmheller’s demise actually is 60 km from the place where that Allied pilot said that he had shot down a German plane?

German records say: Caen-N Alencon. Quite an area, is not it?

Or maybe the easiest thing is to just assume that there were many things wrong with the German report?

At the moment you reffer to a German report. Apparently I do not know of its existence, therefore I ask you to publish it here. I will gladly accept that Wurmheller went down in collision but I would like to know where and when exactly, in what circumstances and with whom he collided.

A historian would never accept such weak “circumstantial evicence”.

Several historians accepted that Katyn massacre was done by Germans and I am not a historian.

I wonder why none of the German pilots who flew on the Eastern Front for real, and not just read about it in books 60 years afterward, don’t agree with Franek in the notion that “Eastern Front was quite a comfortable place for fighters”. Maybe they never asked him?

Perhaps they like fairy tales?

I wonder how “comfortable” Karl-Heinz Weber thought it was to get shot down in air combat with Soviet aircraft on 3 September 1942?

Doubtless much more comfortable comparing to what he felt in his last seconds on 7 June 1944!

This board is a quite a comfortable place. Anyone who suggests that war is a quite comfortable place maybe should ask someone who has been in a war.

Oh yes, glamour of a fighter pilot, well supplied NAAFI, always smiling WAAFs, London by night, plenty of lonely girls, the war can be comfortable and I have heard that.

More seriously, bulk of Soviet aircraft and Soviet airmen could not outperform German aircraft and German airmen. Through most of the war Soviets could not get height advantage which is one of the principles of the success in air combat. Through most of the war Soviets were unable to catch German aircraft.
In other words, German fighter pilots died due to bad luck or their own errors. Do you think it was any different in Poland in 1939? Most of the Polish victories were achieved because of the reasons mentioned above - no wonder, having in mind P.11 was able to fly as fast as Hs 126. Skills of Polish pilots only allowed to make use of those errors. The situation in the Soviet Union was no different.