ors files?

[RodM]

Hi Icare9/Thor,

some further comments:

Icare9, I cannot be sure but the Nachtjagd seemed to use a combination of non-tracer and tracer. I have seen many reports from Allied crews of seeing air-to-air tracer, particularly that fired from the horizontal armament of a night fighter.

With regard to LM742, the brief account by Knight indicates that the engines and wing of the aircraft were on fire and that the fire had breeched the W/Op/Nav compartment just forward of the main spar. This would indicate that the fire was in the fuel tanks and possibly the cross-feed pipes. Knight, the navigator, received burns to the face and hands, slight burns to his legs, and received a gash on the head. He mentions that the W/Operator was also burnt. There is no reference to the bomb load so it is not possible to know if this was on fire as well.

From Knight's account and that of witnesses on the ground, it would seem possible that one or both of the starboard fuel tanks exploded. Knight does not say where he was when he was 'blown out' of the aircraft, but he would seem to have been at or near his station. Such an explosion would not necessarily destroy the whole aircraft. Common results of such explosions would be a wing breaking off or the nose section forward of the main spar breaking away (this latter result was not infrequent in a number of crashes I've investigated).

After going through the 5 Group Form Z again, I found another interesting entry under 'decoys and dummies': "5025 N 1210E 2220 15000 Group of fires on ground appeared to be turned on in sequence with susicious regularity with two explosions." (source: AIR 14/3227)

This was intrepreted as a decoy site to lure bombs, but could, in fact, have been the fires and explosions of an aircraft that had crashed.

Another interesting point,- a Nachtjagd Bf110 fighter of III./NJG1 crashed near Hilburghausen, some 80 km west of LM742, after running out of fuel. This was the area where the BC ORS stated that a loss was seen due to a fighter (Coburg) and from the Forms Z, an aircraft was seen to crash in the area at 2155-2200 hours. The sightings of aircraft crashing/fires on the ground reported near the crash location of LM742 give a time of 2220-2223 hours.

The Bf110 may have been the one flown by Fw. Lahmann, I don't know for sure because the identity of the pilot is not given in the Namenliche Verlustmeldung, so I'm going on the account provided in post # 8. The time of 2157 when a crash was witnessed by an RAF crew is within one minute of the time (2156) when Lahmann claimed an abschuss. An interesting possible connection, but rather meaningless considering all that is known is the time of Lahmann's claim (via the III./NJG1 Abschuesseliste at the BA/MA, Freiburg) and not the location. If III./NJG1 had followed the Brux stream this far eastward (and this is purely conjecture) then it is possible that the claim of Lt. Joachim Sommerau at 22.10 (again, only the time is known via the III./NJG1 Abschuesseliste) could relate to LM742, if, in fact, that aircraft was shot down by a night fighter.

I only mention this to illustrate a counter argument to the case put forward by Prof. Jorg Helbig, Dr.Rudolf Laser and Winfried Bock. While both arguments could somehow have merit, both could also be completely wrong. There just does not appear to be enough surviving evidence to reach such conclusions.

Cheers

Rod