Aalborg, August 13th, 1940

[Jochen Prien]

Gentlemen,

yet another request for help concerning the activities of II./JG 77 over Denmark in the summer of 1940:

A lot has been written about the RAF attack on Aalborg-West a/f on August 13th, 1940, yet the picture isn't entirely clear to me. This begins with the number of Blenheims actually deployed on this attack; from what I can see the German side reported two formations totalling 23 Blenheims.

One Squadron active on this day was of course 82 Sqn. RAF which set out with 12 Blenheims, of which one had to return early, while the others were all lost to the German defences.

But which units formed the second formation ? Or was there a second formation at all ? Chris Shores in his Fledgling Eagles, p. 353, is a bit vague about the identitiy of the second formation although I take it from his account that there were in fact 23 out of initially 24 Blenheims taking part in the attack.

There can be no doubt that there was overclaiming on the German side, but the question is, to what degree - initially there were 16 claims by fighters and four by Flak, later reduced to 15 in total with exactly that number of confirmations for the participating fighters from 5./JG 77.

The second formation - if there was one - seems to have escaped without any loss, although Chris Shores states that German fighters made claims for five Blenheims from that second formation. However, in the loss reports I havve seen so far I can only find the 11 victims from 82 Sqn. and none from another unit.

So, what was going on ecaxtly ? Many thanks in advance and

regards

Jochen Prien