23rd December 1944 - raid on Koln/Cologne - VC for plane shot down

[Cofian]

L.S.,

Obtained the ORB’s for the 582. Understand from these that there were some 5 planes did not return. One mentioned in the ORB’s and not in the other lists sofar has been the 899. The both planes that crashed are not mentioned in the list, nor is 523. The latter are assumed to be non-582 planes.

Another conclusion is that there is a distinct difference in time-over-target notations: 4 are 12:54-55, remaining 7 planes are generally 12:58-59, with one 12:57.30. From one there is no recorded time-over-target.
According to the 582-ORB thus 13 planes survived, 5 were lost.

If I then home in on the 12:54-55 planes as well as the non-‘time-over-target’ plane, I can more or less safely conclude that nearly all of these planes had NOT heard any order to bomb ‘visual’. These all bombed ‘on leader on OBOE’. The odd one out is the plane which bombed at 12:55. He reports to have heard instructions, but still followed ‘the leader’.

From the TOT 12:58-59 planes, including the 12:57:30 one, nearly all HAD received instructions to go visual. Only 2 out of these 7 planes ‘followed the leader’.

I had hoped to determine a sort-off ‘flight’ order, but these are not in the ORB. I do think however based on this info that:
- The 12:54-55 planes bombed together with Palmer: first on site and following the leader (mostly) not having heard the instructions. These are in total (including Palmer) then 5 planes.
- The other planes were in the groups lagging behind.

From the data of RodM it seems therefore that 523 was not a 582 plane.

Plane ‘T’ (must 130-T mentioned in the ORB) which reported on the fighters and ‘R’ (must be 267) who claimed to have damaged a FW.190 seem to belong to the first group (the ‘early bids’ with Palmer?). Interesting also is that according to the ORB’s nearly all of the 13 surviving planes reported ‘flak-holes’, only 3 did not report damage. There is NO report of any plane with a burning pot inner engine…

Based on that we at least can officially ‘forget’ all the surviving planes, including the above ‘T’ and ‘R’ planes doing the fighter claims, as being the plane in the footage. That plane (with a burning port inner engine) thus more or less for sure has gone down. Plane 558 apparently crashed in France, so also that one is not in the footage. The ones remaining are thus the 120, the 141 and the plane of Palmer (371). With ‘kommandeur’ Hackle (claiming) shooting down what he thought to be the leadplane at around the arrival of Palmers group over target and Werner being shot down at around the same time, the footage could well be the Palmer plane.