StG 2 Emblem - Gerschwader's II.Gruppe

[colonel mustard]

Hello There!

I'm new here and I think I have a rather difficult question. I have been interseted in ww2 airplanes since childhood and I have a couple of picture books with planes in them. One day I noticed on the fuselage of a Ju 87b-2 what appears to be a scottish terrier in an orange or red circle. My wife and I have a scottie as a pet, and were wondering if anybody knows why they chose that as their mascot. We looked through a page of Luftwaffe group emblems and noticed there is also a schnauser and two variants of the scottie theme.

We're just curious about the backstory, or if such minutiae is even known anymore.

Thanks a bunch!

[G.R.Morrison]

The dog's name was "Molch," and he belonged to the Gruppenkommandeur, Hubertus Hitschold. The background color of the disc reflected different sub-units of the I Gruppe, Stukageschwader 2 "Immelmann." 1st Staffel used white, 2nd Staffel used red and 3rd Stafel used either its own emblem, or used a yellow background with the black dog.

Luftwaffe unit heraldry reveals wide variety: city coats-of-arms, family crests, animals, plays on words (one example is a commander's name, Mohr, and the unit employing a cartoon 'Moor' with telescope -- it was a reconnaissance unit), etc.

One more canine example is that of dachshund chewing a Soviet I-16 fighter. The unit had three dachshund pups, named 'Lockheed', 'Bamse' (bear in Norwegian) and 'Herdla' their base in the summer of 1941.

Hope this helps, GRM

[colonel mustard]

Thank you very much! That's exactly what we were looking for. Very Cool!

kurt