Knoke's claim, Nov 6 1942

[Hans Nauta]

Hi Kutscha,

I don't want to state that Heinz Knoke deliberately padded his claim. However, after having researched various claims over North-West Holland, including some 'mysterious' claims too, it always turned out that at least SOMETHING happened.

During an air battle, the nerves of pilots were strained and visibility wasn't always perfect. A Blenheim, for instance, diving away with black smoke was very easily claimed as destroyed while the Bristol engines had the characteristics of emitting black smoke when thrusted into 9 lbs boost. A Blenheim crew, diving away for cloud cover, eventually reached base, sometimes with only slight damage, while being claimed as destroyed by the German pilot!
I've filed several events in detail like above.

Back to 6th November 1942. If there isn't a Mosquito loss and not a matching RAF loss at all, what could have happened?
According to the Bomber Command War Diaries Wilhelmshaven was one of the targets that day. A cloud cover raid was carried out by 14 Wellingtons and 5 Lancasters. It could have been possible that Knoke met one of the attackers. Perhaps unbelievable, but he may have misidentified and attacked a Wellington, which eventually managed to return to England.

A check in the Operations Record Books of 1 and 3 RAF Group is necessary to see whether one of the Wellingtons was attacked by a Bf.109 on the location of Knoke's claim.

Kind regards,
Hans Nauta