Erwin Clausen, 132 or 100 aerial-victories

[Johannes]

Gentlemen

Sheets for 1./LG 2/1./JG 77 would appear to be complete, though Jochen Prien or boch his reader has mis-read the terribly faint mikrofilms with the following:-

4th July 1941 1750 hrs Wilhelm Schneider.....should read Erwin Clausen
11th July 1941 1115 hrs Fritz Lüer….should read Hans Laun
12th July 1941 0657 hrs Wilhelm Schneider...…..should read Fritz Lüer.

I bet these dates were at the top of a sheet.

Anyway back to Clausen. Jochen Prien indicates with a "B" if found on the mikrofilms, he has many Clausen claims not thus indicated, so you would suspect a missing sheet, however there is one constant here, that being Herbert Ihlefeld, his claims can clearly be read with dates from his Bf109's rudder, and they ALL appear on the mikrofilms, why should his and not Clausen's?, same with Geißhardt, by memory I have a document listing his claims with times, and they are ALL on the mikrofilms! There are so many of Clausen's not on the mikrofilms that Jochen Prien has listed that surely they cannot all have been just unconfirmed. As to other publications having the same information, I would say they have simply copied Jochen's work/speculations. My co-author John Foreman always says that once published it's "cast in stone" i.e everybody will believe it true, it must be it's in a book.

Anyhow that is my opinion on the matter, a somewhat educated one, but we must all understand that everybody makes mistakes.....everybody. We all know that our work gets plagiarized, and I know mine will be too, including the mistakes!, even perfectly worked research is unlikely to get published without typo-errors......and as I say nothing is perfect.

Kind Regards

Johannes

[Maciej Góralczyk]

Originally Posted by Johannes

however there is one constant here, that being Herbert Ihlefeld, his claims can clearly be read with dates from his Bf109's rudder

Which rudder? I don't have your book, so I must rely on JFV 6/II and I see some differences when comparing the victory list with this photo (source: ex-ebay auction):
https://abload.de/img/bf1099bf6n.jpg
Even more differences may be seen in comparison with this sheet (also saved from ebay two years ago):
https://abload.de/img/ihlefeldw.nr.6095ruddc0eth.jpg
https://abload.de/img/ihlefeldw.nr.6095ruddjifqx.jpg

Your discussion about Clausen's victories is highly interesting for me, as I wonder whether these photos show Clausen's or Freytag's Bf 109 F-4:
https://abload.de/img/clausenorfreytag-2brdde.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flugfeld.jpg
According to the listings in JFV, when Freytag and Clausen switched between 1. and 6 Staffel, either had 57 victories.

Best regards,
Maciej

[Johannes]

Hi Maciej

Some interesting photos, but alas I cannot determine Clausen's or Freytag, but the first would be the Ihlefeld rudder I viewed, by memory I think one was not on the mikrofilms(unconfirmed) before Russia.

Kind Regards

Johannes