Teutonic Gladiators

[Kari Lumppio]

Hello!

Scale Models magazine June 1982 issue has article "Teutonic Gladiators" by Karl Kössler. It is a short modelling article but contains many, many interesting historical facts.

According the article there are logbook (Uffz Heinz Wolski) entries for at least five Gloster Gladiators: 1E+PH, 1E+BL, 1E+DK, 1E+SH and 1E+JM. The Gladiators came with Soviet red stars so their origin is either Latvia or Lithuania. The swastikas found under soviet paint do point that at least some of them were from Latvia.

Also based on the article various documents (Quartermaster loss lists, logbook) report the Gladiators as "Gloster G6" (no WNr given), "Gloster G5" (W.Nr. 45829), "Gloster 9" (W.Nr. 45710) "Gloster 5" (W.Nr. 45717) and plain "Gloster" (W.Nr. 45826).

Rereading the article today something occurred to me. Could the numbers after the letter "G" be the last digit of the Lithuanian Air Force code?

Lithuanian Gladiators were coded from G-704 to G-717 ( http://www.geocities.com/acrawford0/lithuanian.html ). It seems the letter-number in German record entries is different for every case and IMO simply cannot be type designation. There were no Gladiator type 5, 6 etc. Of course the different "Werke Nummern" of "Gloster G5" and "Gloster 5" do throw a spanner into my works. Or not if the "Gloster 5" was of Latvian origin and indeed different individual.

Has there been any developements in the sorting of these Luftwaffe Gladiators (origin, original code, "W.Nr.", Stkz, Lw unit code)? I don't have Crawfords Gladiator -book (Mushroom), at least yet. At LEMB captured Gladiator-thread there seems to be no solution either ( http://www.luftwaffe-experten.org/fo...showtopic=1097 ).

Your thoughts?

Cheers,
Kari

PS. Alex Crawford has page also for the Latvian Gladiators:
http://www.geocities.com/acrawford0/Latvian.html

[Pilot]

In the French magazine Avions was excellent series in the late '90 about the various Gladiator operators so there you could also find answer.

Cheers