3./KGr.zbV 9

[CJE]

Hello,

A Ju 52/3m of this unit was claimed by Enseigne de vaisseau Philippe de Scitivaux de Greische of escadrille AC1 (Aéronautique navale - or French Navy) over Ijmuiden on 10.05.40.
However, the loss of this Ju 52 does not appear in Peter Cornwell's book.
Can anyone tell me more?

Thanks in advance.

Chris

[Merlin]

A claim by the French Navy near Ijmuiden - some 350km away from the French territory, that's unbelievable.

The only Ju 52 shot down by fighters that day came down near Vrusschenhusken in Southern Holland near the German border.

[Stig Jarlevik]

Chris

According to Lucien Morareau the claim was made in the Marck area (Calais) and with both French units (AC 1 and AC 2) based at Calais, range is not an issue as such.
However why a German Ju 52 should be there in the first place feels a bit unlikely but since EV de Scitivaux was wounded in the combat he obviously must have been in combat with something....a Luftwaffe reconnaissance aircraft perhaps?

What is your evidence now to put the combat over Ijmuiden? A rather unlikely place for a Potez fighter unit basically tasked with convoy protection or equivalent coastal tasks.

Cheers
Stig

[CJE]

I worked from de Scitivaux's own testimony.
He wrote : "I decided to fly further up North off Ijmuiden and I saw a large German three-engined plane looking like an Arado."

He was in patrol over the Scheldt mouth, which is about 50 km away from Ijmuiden.

[Stig Jarlevik]

That was interesting Chris

Is this statement of his from a diary or is it some kind of testimony from memory some '50-years' later?

I believe Lucien must have worked from some kind of Naval records remaining in France which means the memory statement (if such) is in conflict with the remaining documents.

Have you been in contact with Lucien??

Cheers
Stig

[CJE]

Lucien is a friend of mine.
De Scitivaux personal account comes from "Le Rapport Jozan", a report by the Flottille F1C C/O (Jozan) written after the campaign of France. Of course, it was made from memory and may contain some inaccuracies. However, it's an excellent basis when you work on the fighter units of the French Navy.

[mathieu]

This is what I found on a Dutch website: http://www.verliesregister.studiegro...php?SGLO=T0329
It seems that at least a Ju 52 was lost near IJmuiden on the 10th of May 1940.
Interesting story!

[Pieter H]

Hi guys,
in my research on the Ju52 landings in Holland this has long been one of the most problematic to explain. So let me share my observations and conclusions:

- I (finally) hold the report of Scitivaux for credible, assuming a fight over the Dutch coast between roughly Hoek van Holland and Wassenaar. Distance was well within reach of the Potez, there was clearly fighting along the coast at Ockenburg and Valkenburg air fields, so not unlogical he was having a look. Also other French reconnaissance flights made it as far as Rotterdam, so I see nothing unrealistic in this report.
- although he claims a flight up to IJmuiden, a fight there never happened, so I suspect he took the harbour of Hoek van Holland for IJmuiden, and so the encounter was more to the south near Den Haag (The Hague).
- timing fight according most sources including Gillet around 10.00 BST, 09.20 Dutch time
- assuming this timing is correct, the incident does not match to any transport wave in this area, with or without unexplained losses.
- the lonely Ju52 suggests a returning flight, of which there only a very limited number. One of the a/c landed on the beach at Kijkduin which were 2./KGrzbV.9 but of which there were no reported returns are the most likely candidates.
- in that case eight unexplained 2./KGrzbV.9 PoW can finally be matched to a loss (since there were no other locations where this could have happened; all 2./KGrzbV.9 losses are identified and nowhere option for 8 more POW).
- only issue remains that in these 8 crew there is one FF and 3 BM’s; my interpretation is that a BM was flying the 2nd machine, probably due to a lack of pilots, and like they were supposed to do when the FF was wounded. I’ve chosen Jerzembeck because Horter is said to be member of Kornprobst crew by Weiss, and Moseler was wounded, possible as BS under the French attacks.
- See Brongers Residentie p74. Timing indeed halfway the morning.
On this one Kamphuis [Official report fighting around Den Haag] p.70 says: “Omstreeks 11.00 bereikte de voorste afdelingen [van 6-13 Dep.Bat bezig met een aanval richting het vliegveld] de rand van Loosduinen, nadat van de inzittenden van een Duits transportvliegtuig, dat zuid-west van de Houtweg een noodlanding had verricht, een achttal manschappen gevangen was genomen”. [Around 11.00 the leading sections of 6-13 Dep.Bat. while making an attack in the direction of the air field [Ockenburg] reached the outskirts of Loosduinen, after they had made 8 crew pisoner from a German transport aircraft that had made an emergency landing south west of the Houtweg."]
This confirms roughly an hour before 11.00 and 8 men.
- Kamphuis says 6-13 DepBtl, while the other sources say 4-13, including battle reports, so I stick to 4-13.

So this would be the Cornwell style report of the intial landing of two Junkers on the beach:

2./KGrzbV.9 Junkers Ju52. Diverted from Ypenburg, forced-landed on the beach south of the Badhotel Kijkduin at km-pole 107, 7.00 a.m. LT, 7.40 BST. Crew unhurt. 16 men of 2./NA22 off-loaded. Aircraft 9P+EK damaged and abandoned, later set alight by shelling from Hr.Ms. van Galen and a 100% write-off.

2./KGrzbV.9 Junkers Ju52. Diverted from Ypenburg, forced-landed on the beach south of the Badhotel Kijkduin at km-pole 107, 7.00 a.m. LT, 7.40 BST. Crew unhurt. 16 men of 2./NA22 off-loaded. Aircraft undamaged and returned.
The two crew of these aircraft were
- FF Fw Georg Kornprobst, BO ObLt Adolf Lindloff, BM Fw Willi Horter and BF Uffz Siegfried Bühring
- FF/BM Otto Jerzembeck, BO Uffz Helmut Liebscher, FF/BM Uffz Heinz Moseler, BF Uffz Rudolf Schade
Soldiers from this aircraft stranded at Kijkduin took refuge in woods around Ockenrode where, operating as ‘Gruppe Pollay‘, they remained in action until the Dutch surrender.
Both crews returned in the undamaged aircraft around 9.15 a.m. LT 9.55 BST, after which it was almost immediately attacked by a French Potez 631 and crash landed at Loosduinen.

The story of the 2nd Junkers then extends into the following description:
2./KGrzbV.9 Junkers Ju52. Unable to land at Ockenburg, forced-landed on the beach south of the Badhotel Kijkduin at km-pole 107, 7.00 a.m. LT, 7.40 BST. Crew unhurt. 16 men of 2./NA22 off-loaded. Aircraft undamaged and took-off with own crew plus four crew of abandoned 9P+EK, when attacked over the beach between Scheveningen and Hoek van Holland by LV Philippe de Scitivaux in a Potez 631 of the French Aéronavale F1C-AC1. Crash landed south of Den Haag at Loosduinen, south-west of the Houtweg and north of Bouwlust, 9.30 a.m. LT, 10.10 BST. FF/BM Uffz Otto Jerzembeck and BF Uffz Siegfried Bühring wounded, admitted to hospitals in Den Haag, FF Fw Georg Kornprobst, BO ObLt Adolf Lindloff, BM Fw Willi Horter, BO Uffz Helmut Liebscher, FF/BM Uffz Heinz Moseler and BF Uffz Rudolf Schade all captured unhurt by the 4-13 Depot Bataljon. Aircraft damaged, later recovered.
It is not known which of the two BM’s Jerzembeck or Moseler was acting as pilot on this flight. All crew members except Bühring were brought to the UK and spent the remainder of the war in Canada. Bühring was trasported back to Germany after the Dutch surrender.

As always my best possible explanation given the available data, but open to correction or refinement.

Cheers, Pieter

[Stig Jarlevik]

Thanks Pieter

Quite an in interesting piece of work. Need to go through it more carefully.

However if we move the combat from IJmuiden down to southern Holland we do in fact get quite a large discrepancy from de Scitivaux's combat report. A bit odd to find such a large distance difference from an experienced pilot, but I guess more strange things than that happened during the war....

Cheers
Stig

[Stig Jarlevik]

Thanks again Pieter

I have looked a bit more closely at your deductions and even if it is a theory, it is a good one and I cannot personally say anything against it, not with my own limited sources. So I confess I have copied it to keep it! Hope you don't mind...

Also thanks to Chris, who started the thread, to Gerhard who took the bait and everyone else who took up the challenge.

This proved to be a very interesting subject, indeed minute, but very rewarding never-the-less.

Thank You Guys
Cheers
Stig