Luftwaffe Target Code 10281

[Larry deZeng]

Spot on, Andy. I plead old age as my excuse. I should not have missed that one because I have spent the last couple of years buried in those Luftwaffe recce photos of Eastern Front airfields, the Luftwaffe Gazetteer for them as well as the Luftwaffe Flugplatzatlas, all of which are copiously marked with the place names and the ZNr.'s. Conclusion: there were no numerical country designations; they used SU, GB, etc., for those. The numeric "10" was used as the target designation for Airfields, no matter where they were. By fall 1943, the number of VVS airfields that were potential Luftwaffe targets climbed past 10,000 and this meant some labeling adjustments were needed. So they started using four more numbers in addition to "10" to designate airfields in the East: these were 11, 12, 13 and 14. Whether or not this change also applied to newly built Allied airfields in the West and the Mediterranean, I cannot say.

L.