Losses German Bight 18.12.1939

[Jochen Prien]

Jörn,

you are of course right that in JG 77 Vol 1 - published in 1992 - based on German sources the August 13th, 1940, attack on Aalborg was described along the lines of the German reports which recorded an attack of 23 Blenheims as opposed to the 11 of 82 Sqn. which actually made it to Aalborg. Based on that number the Luftwaffe had no problems to confirm 15 claims of 5./JG 77. As a matter of fact 11 out of 11 Blenheims which reached their target were shot down and in the course of this melé there was some over-claiming on the part of 5./JG 77.

This has however been corrected in JFV Vol. 3, p.13 ( publ. in 2000 ), and is completely set straight in the substantially revised JG 77 unit history I'm working on as a side-line to the JFV series.

As for the actual RAF losses on December 18th, 1939, this is a subject that has yet to be finally addressed; the RAF attack and the German response fill almost a dozen pages in the revised JG 77 manuscript, based definitely not on secondary sources, and leaving a number of questions that have yet to be answered. It's simply too much to just pack in a short post here. JG 77 Vol. 1 is certainly outdated in many aspects, but the coverage of December 18th, 1939, still has its merits.

Regards

Jochen Prien