Ju-52 over Maastricht May 10 1940

[Pieter H]

A question that has been bothering me for a long time:
Exactly which Ju-52 units were active over Maastricht and Belgian Limburg on May 10, 1940?
These Ju-52's first towed the DFS230 gliders that attacked Eben Emael fortress and the Albert channel bridges, but later also dropped fake parachute troopers to confuse the belgian ground forces.

Sources mention several units, most of which seem to be wrong:

• KGr.zbV5. Two Junkers that crashed in dutch Limburg are attributed to this unit by Puetz. However, according to Rosch Luftwaffe Coding & Markings this unit was only created in January 1942
• 17./KGr.zbV5 is sometimes mentioned as a special unit created for the DFS glider towing. Again, this would suggest an existing KGrzbV5, unless the germans deliberately wanted to confuse everybody by allocating a fake Staffel number.
• KGrzbV17, which never existed at all
• KGrzbV172. But this unit was fully engaged in the attack on the Netherlands, and - unless it had a larger than normal size - does not seem to have given away a serious number of machines.

Somehow I have the impression that across all these sources there has been a lot of wrong copying or misinterpreting.
Given that most Junker52 Gruppen were engaged in Holland for the airborne operation, the only transport units existing at this time for which I have not found clear allocations are the 4 Gruppen that were created for the Norway campaign: KGrzbV105, 106, 107 and 108. Was it one of these?

Would be happy if anybody could shed some light on this.

Pieter

[Peter Cornwell]

According to Blitzkrieg in the West Then & Now by Jean Paul Pallud p80 it was the LS-Versuchzug, an experimental unit formed in January 1939 for the development of towed-glider operations, & renamed 17./KGzbV.5 in October that year when it moved to Hildesheim.

[Radar1]

go to http://www.butzweilerhof.com/ebenemael.htm , here you find a lot of information about the units.