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Old 17th February 2012, 06:07
Johannes Johannes is offline
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Re: Birth/Death details of non Ritterkreuz 50+ aces

Hi Graig

Some good points. Sometimes there are time-periods when the micro films(for whatever reason) seem to be missing details from certain units, the most noteable is JG5, moreover the daily micro film entries generally start in late July 1942 and end at varingly times in December 1944, but some units do not, after years of studying the micro films I know which units started when, also there are complete lists prior to the daily account, some of these are missing, point is I have taken all this into account. The KBT documents of 1945 often marks a pilots claim with a number i.e August Lamaberts last is marked as nr 103, so his total of 116(widely believed) is probably at fault, moreover the 116 were widely believed to be all Russian aircraft, yet his 103rd was an American Mustang on 17th April 1945. Like JG5 SG2's claims on the micro films are sporadic, but unlike JG5's that are mostly there SG2's are largely missing.
Going by memory I think that it is Herbert Kaiser's Russian claims that are recorded under a different name, and there is a Joachim Müncheberg entry for Russia when he was claearly in the West, also a few are given dates a day or two after the pilots death or wounded, apart from wrong units given(A Friedrich Obleser one springs to mind). With Woidich we are accepting 110, yet even his own log-book gives just eighty-two, moreover I have dates for the other twenty-eight(which are given during a time when his conrades are all recorded), these twenty-eight when you look at them are completely out of character with his usual claiming patern i.e are all multiple claims daily to his usual very slow steady rate. Bernd Barbas has a copy of his offical(Woidich's) list, and was to meet Woidich for the first time to question this , but Woidich sadly died that day! Another point is that some pilots wanted to forget the war. Bernd and myself wrote to Karl Gratz about his lack of western claims i.e he is generally accepted as 138 claims, seventeen west!, but he didn't even want to talk about the war, which as he pointed out was a small piece of his lifespan!

So is short if I have a pilot who's accepted(without evidence)claims do not appear on the micro films, yet his conrades flying in the same staffel do, then it just should not be, but we also have to think where this pilots accepted claims came from, he probably didn't survive the war, so is propably nothing of his going.

~Innocent until proven guilty, if there are 1945 claims for a pilot I will generally accept them, if from a log-book then I assume they would have been confimed in the fullness of time! Best log-book to look at for 1945 is Peter Düttmann's for deatil, thoough I did find a few of his offical 150 were never confirmed, and a few of his unconfirmed were confirmed, he also had two tanks in his total, but as tanks do not fly I have dis-counted these, (Hans Ellendt also had two tanks among his offical sixty-four, Peter-Georg Eder likewise) I also don't count aircraft destroyed on the ground!

But the whole purpose of this line is to question each other to arrive at some sort of fact based truth, and let's not forget the "Cast in stone" theory where if something is published in a book it is fact.
Years ago a friend of mine who know the ace Marquardt forwarded him a list I had pieced together for him because his log-book had been lost, unfortunalety I had ommitted two claims, years later I found his list somewhwere, with the two omitions, I checked it against my updated version not realising it was my own work, and it was sometime before I worked out it was an earler version of my on work!

Anyway I'll do my 30-39 list next, and hope to enjoy some more corrections/additions.

Regards

Johannes
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