A Galland mystery – Historical question to experts including J. Prien: Galland’s two victories won on 3 June 1940

[Laurent Rizzotti]

As Jochen say, I think that anything written in Germany during the 1950s about WWII should be taken as a first-person point of view, but certainly not as a 100% accurate history book. At this date, Galland had probably very few WWI-era documents available to support his writing, so much was probably done by memory. And to remember all exact dates a dozen years after the event would be impressive. It's a common occurence in witness stories to mix events that were close in time, so Galland could have mixed the Paula operation (that was an unique operation during the campaign) and another air battle on 9 June.

On the other had, Prien and co have gathered many sources that have become available since Galland wrote his books.

On a side note, I am not sure that speaking of translation of Galland's books as "separate sources" is valid: in most cases, the translator only translates, there is no new research or update done.

Last point, according to the JFV book, JG German pilots claimed 36 victories between 1430 and 1530 hrs in the area of operation Paula, to which 8-9 kills by ZG 26 could be added according to the files by Tony Wood, and not counting 7 kills by II./JG 2 for French fighters with no time in the Epernay area. 18 French fighters were lost, so almost 3 claims were made for each loss. In this case, identifying who shot down who seems difficult for me, and adding possibly or probably to any identification seems the right thing to do in my humble opinion.

By the way, I found some weeks ago a webpage I saved 20-15 years ago, with what was then considered to be Galland's claim list. A dozen at least of the claims had no date, or a date with question mark, and it was from a website about the Luftwaffe and the guy doing it did it best with the sources then available. I think that the collective work of the JFV series led by Mr Prien is now the most accurate victory list available, and it points missing claims and unclear dates when needed. And Mr Prien did not hesitate to correct the claims he wrote about in his former books on JG 53 for example, as new sources allow such corrections.