Ta152 loss

Originally Posted by Reiner

Hello
I do`nt believe that Shaw shot down Sattler. The Combat report from Shaw states that he shot down a Fw190 with east course. I think, it was the Fw190 of Skupina, which crashed near Garlin. Eyewitnesses from Garlin saw a lone Fw190 with east course and two "American" fighterplanes. If Shaw know his position not exactly so he could mistook Grabow with Ludwigslust. 10km SE of the town what he means as Ludwigslust there is Garlin. For me W/O never shot down Ofw.Sattler and his Ta152.

Greetings, Rene

An enough worthwhile hypothesis, but there are some points which make me think that it's unlikely it's right.

1) First, Shaw didn't simply reported that the Fw190 was flying towards East, he reported that the E/A repeatedly broke from East to West (even before the fatal approach of the Tempest).

"I saw a single Fw.190 flying east at deck level ... The 190 broke ... the E/A straightened out east ... the 190 broke rather later & again to port ... It was a full deflection shot & I opened fire ... I fired a long burst ... flames appeared from the port side".

It means that the Fw was hit on the port (i.e. left) side while he was flying toward West (after some previous breaks), by Shaw positioned South respect to the German and flying towards NW (to fire his deflection shot).
So we haven't a Fw "flying with East course" but a repeatedly turning Fw that was shot down while flying towards West.

2) The repeated breaking is really consistent with an unaware pilot (Sattler) trying to catch sight of his comrades already engaged into the near battle.
Had Skupina, flying alone, quite so good reasons to break again and again instead of running straigth toward East?

3) Garlin is about 20 km far from to Ludwigslust, not just 10 km.
20 km, especially into that war scene, are a not-so-negligible distance even for planes, for example is the DOUBLE distance from Neustadt-Glewe to Ludwigslust.
And is HALF of the distance from Ludwigslust to Perleberg, which is the area covered by the Armed Recce of the four 486 Squadron Tempests. So the correct location identification given by Shaw for Garlin area in his report should have been "at half route from Ludwigslust to Perleberg", not near Ludwigslust, even if Shaw didn't knew the name of Garlin village.
So, could it be that Shaw mistook Garlin for Ludwigslust? Of course it could be, but IMHO it's more likely that he didn't.

4) We would also think that witnesses did't recognize British insigna and mistook Tempest for "American planes".
Again, it could be possible but Tempests are so different from P-47 or P-51, for colour (camouflaged vs usually silver) even more than for shape and insigna, that German citizen used to look every day at enemy aircraft on their heads, at low heigths, should had little difficulty to recognize correctly.
Obviously, it could be that "American" here just means "enemy Allied planes" but this should be verified.

All in all, I think that the "Skupina hypothesis" could have no more than 20-30% chance to be right.

However, more investigations would be good.