The Eagles Over Europe Project

[RudiS]

Originally Posted by Andreas Brekken

RudiS - how can you be sure that this is the way this happened? Do you know that the buyer of the first photograph is the seller of the second one?
Andreas B

I don't know if the buyer of the first photo is the seller of the second one. But I am sure that the skull emblem wasn't on the original photo.

Let’s look at the facts:
1). The aircraft coded 5J+CH belonged to KG4, not to KG54.
2). Larry has about 20 photos in the EOE DB on which the skull emblem of KG54 is NOT on this aircraft.
3). The aircraft coded 5J+CH was lost in Poland in september 1939. By that time I./KG54 didn't use this version of the skull emblem, but a smaller version in white. This version of the skull emblem came in use after the invasion of Poland and before the beginning of the Norwegian campaign.

So what are the possiblities:
A). Someone put a new, non-existing version of the skull emblem of KG54 on a KG4 aircraft before or during the Poland campaign. The emblem looked so good that KG54 decided to replace all of its skull emblems on its aircraft by this one.
B). Someone put the KG54 skull emblem on this photo later during the war.
C). Someone put the KG54 skull emblem on this photo well after the war.

My opinion:
Possibility A is far fetched to say the least.
Possibility B is possible but unlikely. As far as I know censors would remove codes and emblems, not add them. And even if there was a reason for disguising this KG4 aircraft as a KG54 one, why leave the tactical code of KG4 on it?
So for me Possibility C is the only logical one.

Regards,
Rudi.