German overclaims in the East. Hartmann and others...

[HGabor]

Folks,

Note, that MANY locations (or at least names) in soviet reports do not exist anymore, so you will never find them in recent maps or Google Earth. Soviet reports were based on VEEERY detailed military maps, showing even farms or farm-centres in the area which sometimes disappeared after the war.

Another issue is the (sometimes politically motivated) name-changes during post-war Communism. One report in my prev. comments eg. mentioned 'Saint-Peter'. (Сентпетр) This was actually 'Kajászószentpéter' (Kayaso-St-Peter), or just Szentpéter (Saint-Peter) in short. During communism 'Saint-Peter' disappeared from the name, so now you find only Kajászó in recent maps, not Szentpeter, just like in original soviet combat report!

Since I have copies of many original soviet 1944-1945 military maps of Hungary, I was able to identify many dogfight and crash locations specified in combat reports, but I am telling you, sometimes it took for a long time...!

...finally: see draft of ml.l-t Aleksandr Petrovich Smirnov's La-5FN (No.392124100) crash-landing at Madocsa airfield, Hungary on January 30, 1945 from his accident investigation file at TsAMO Military archives at Podolsk, Russia. Note short version of his La-5 serial (24100) in report's header.

(The beginning part of usual La-5 serials '3921' meant only factory and AC model: 39 was factory code of the La-5, 21 meant Gorky factory (Factory no.21 in Gorky). Combat reports sometimes used only the 'real' plane-serials, so only the short batch and plane ID part of the digits, like here: 24100.

Gabor

PS: folks, looks like I am running out of attachment space, what to do now...?