Perhaps the last question on the forum - The Battle of Heligoland Bight, 18 December 1939

[Dan History]

Dear all, I am, of course, very sad that it appears that this forum, Twelve O'Clock High, is disappearing. A few members have helped me over the years, some very considerably, and TOCH has always been the place to ask a complicated question on any of a variety of themes of aviation history during the Second World War. Thanks are due to forum owner Ruy Horta, moderators Nick Beale and John Beaman, and too many individual forum members to list by name. I still owe several specific people e-mails, and those will finally be coming very soon. For the moment, I am in the process of completing yet another article about the Luftwaffe, this time a brief but far from superficial overview of the Battle of Heligoland Bight of 18 December 1939. The basics are well known - of 24 RAF Wellington bombers which flew to attack Kriegsmarine warships that day; two turned back, 12 were shot down, and three never flew again. Can anyone provide a full list of Luftwaffe claims for aerial victories on that day? Several very famous pilots reported successes, including Falck, Gollob, Steinhoff and Lent. Donald Caldwell's history of JG 26 reports the claims of Steinhoff's Staffel, but there does not appear to be a readily available list of all the claims made that day. I can always be reached on my Substack, The New World Crisis: https://newworldcrisis.substack.com/ My two latest articles are the following: 80 years after VE-Day, the West still has not learned to pre-empt disaster https://www.ynetnews.com/article/sy1fohygxe How Churchill’s Successor Gave Stalin the MiG https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/h...ave-stalin-mig Regards and good luck to all! Dan

[Chris Goss]

Dan: 1 Dec 39 has been done many time (by John Foreman some years ago being one of the first). As a result I have quite a bit of material on this day especially from I./ZG 76 and Helmut Lent's perspective and all the German kills and losses so PM me if you want

[Dan History]

Chris, thank you for your reply. Good to see that you are here, even in the final moments. You are right, of course, 18 December 1939 has been done almost to death, it is one of the most studied aerial engagements of the entire war. I have written my article in response to a request by an editor, and I have taken what I trust is an original and substantive approach to a well-known subject - I will send you my pre-publication manuscript. Thank you very much for offering the information that you have, a private message is on its way.

[Nick Beale]

OK, since we're still here … The German Lagebericht (West) Nr. 119 says (my translation):

Following kills were confirmed:

Kommodore JG 1: 1 kill
By I./JG 77: 15 kills
By II./JG 77: 13 kills
10./JG 26: 5 kils
Naval Flak: 1 kill
On the return flight, 40 km east of Cromer (Norfolk) 1 went down into the sea.

The same document gives a narrative of how the combats developed. Report No. 118 only has a paragraph, presumably because more information had come in by the following day.

By the way, Bundesarchiv RL 2-V/65, 'Einsatz von DT-Geräten (Gerät "Freya")' says that as of 21 October 1939 there were 7 Freya sets available, to be deployed as follows: 1 to Luftgau XII, 2 to LG XI, 4 to LG VI. The last of these sets was expected to be delivered by 5 December with no mention of any more deliveries that year.

[VtwinVince]

I have a couple of nice photos of a participant in this action, if that's of interest.

[Stig Jarlevik]

Dan

Robin Holmes wrote a book about it in 2009
The Battle of Heligoland Bight 1939

Cheers
Stig

PS: A question for Nick Beale
Why did the British add (keep?) the i in Heligoland? In Sweden we have the word 'helig' meaning holy, which
of course is what the Island is all about, 'Holy Land' (Heilig Land (rough German) or Heligt land (correct Swedish).
This if course makes me wonder what was so holy about the place.
For me as a bird watcher I have been there three times and there are still plenty of bombcraters on top....