7.2.44 JG 53 losses

[James A Pratt III]

On 7Feb 1944 III/JG 53 had 3 Br 109s air combat losses over Italy. The book "Segregated Skies" has the 99 FS claiming 3 Fw-190s near Anzio. Could the JG 53 losses be these claims?

Grip while the airwar in the med is pretty well covered from June 1940 to May 1943 and June 1944 to May 1945. There is a big gap in the middle that needs to be covered by one or two books.

[Nick Beale]

Originally Posted by James A Pratt III

There is a big gap in the middle that needs to be covered by one or two books.

I'd say this to anyone — why not have a go? If there's something that interests you and it's not been covered, who better to tackle it?

On 7 February II./SG 4 attacked Anzio and lost two Fw 190s in combat with Spitfires. Can't help with III./JG 53 losses on that day, though.

[yogybär]

Originally Posted by James A Pratt III

the med is pretty well covered from June 1940 to May 1943 and June 1944 to May 1945. There is a big gap in the middle that needs to be covered by one or two books.

OT, but which books would you suggest for the "covered periods"?

[James A Pratt III]

Fighters over the desert
Fighters over Tunisa
Malta the Hurricane Years
Malta the Spitfire year
Dust clouds in the Middle East
Air War over Greece, Yugoslavia and Crete (?)
Spitfire over Sicily
Hurricane over the desert (?)
Hurricane over Malta (?)
Churchill's Folly
Air war Over Italy 1944-45
This is off the top of my head I am not sure I got all the titles right. Most are put out by Grub street.

[Laurent Rizzotti]

I will add "Desert Prelude" for June-December 1940 and "Hurricanes over Tobruk" for January-June 1941.

Your title are correct, except your forget the s avec Spitfire and Hurricane in most of them.

I agree that the period 1940-mid 1943 is rather well covered.

For the 44-45 period, the only book in your list is "Air War Italy 1944-1945". This book is very good but is only covering the Axis side of the air activity over Italy between June 1944 and May 1945. It does not cover the Allied side, except for air battles or giving results of Allied bombing of airfields. Most of the air war in Italy for this period saw Allied airmen facing Flak, and that is almost completly out of the subject of this book.

This book won't also describe the main MTO actions (in terms of air battles) for this period: the 15th Air Force raid on Southern and Central Europe (well, up to Berlin in 1945).

So I won't say that the June 1944 to May 1945 is better covered than the June 1943-May 1944 one...

[Nick Beale]

Originally Posted by Laurent Rizzotti

For the 44-45 period, the only book in your list is "Air War Italy 1944-1945". This book is very good but is only covering the Axis side of the air activity over Italy between June 1944 and May 1945. It does not cover the Allied side, except for air battles or giving results of Allied bombing of airfields. Most of the air war in Italy for this period saw Allied airmen facing Flak, and that is almost completly out of the subject of this book.

This book won't also describe the main MTO actions (in terms of air battles) for this period: the 15th Air Force raid on Southern and Central Europe (well, up to Berlin in 1945).

Don't forget Chris Shores' "Pictorial History of the Mediterranean Air War" (3 volumes). Also, if you want Allied operations as well as Axis then there's Andrew Brookes' "Air War Over Italy." My own impression is that Brookes' account of the Axis side is heavily indebted to ours — he cites our book as a source and uses verbatim one of my translations of a German source document, amongst other things.

Do the 15th AF's battles really count as the MTO when they are raiding Austria and Germany? I know they started out from Italy but …

What we actually left out was Allied combat over/off Italy against German reconnaissance aircraft coming from Greece and the Balkans. That material was in the early drafts but we had to cut about 35,000 words to keep to the publishers' limits. (Don't ask … I haven't got that text anymore, or if I had it would be on a 720 kb floppy disk from an Atari ST I know longer own and in some unreadable 20 year-old word-processing format).

On my website are the following on the MTO:

• I./JG 2 in Italy, February–April 1944
• Kittyhawk versus Fw 190, April 1944
• SG 4, Last Battles in Italy
• II./NJG 6 in Italy, May–June 1944
• JG 200 in Provence, June–August 1944
• Operation Dragoon, August 1944 [overdue for a rewrite]
• II./SG 10 in Yugoslavia, November 1944