aerial victories of german bomber crews

[jim norton]

hello!
a number of bomber crews shot down british aircraft for example during the battle of britain. is there an overview of when and who shot down whom?
all the best
jim

[Chris Goss]

Rarely come across anything like this even though it obviously did happen. For example, on 9 Sep 40, a III./KG 53 crew shot down a 605 Sqn Hurricane and damaged another which then collided with their He 111 bringing it down. No claims for 2 Hurricanes filed for obvious reasons. I am afraid it is a case of bombers bomb and fighters fight!

[Juha]

Nothing exact but a bit of general info on the subject.
From my homepages:
"The Battle of Britain by Richard Hough’s and Denis Richards (Coronet edition 1990 ISBN 0 340 53470 2) p. 156 note** refers the results of a study based on opinions given in 1988 by some 100 surviving Battle of Britain era British fighter pilots. 40 of them rated the quality of German bomber gunnery good or excellent, 32 thought it average and 30 poor. In the text there is a short description of the combat on 13 August 1940 between the tight formations of the Dornier Do 17Zs from the II. and the III./KG 2 and the Spitfires from the 74 Squadron and the Hurricanes from the 111 and the 151 Squadrons during which the air gunners shot down two British fighters, but the KG 2 lost five Dorniers and four more badly damaged. In the note there is also mentioned a combat during which 9 He 111s shot down three out of the first six attacking Hurricanes. This probably refers to the combat between 9./KG 55 and 79 Squadron over the Irish Sea on 29 September 1940. 9. Staffel lost one He 111 and two others were so badly damaged that they were forced to turn back (out of 9 He 111s) but He 111 gunners shot down three Hurricanes out of 11."

Ps. The text is 13 years old.

[Johannes]

Hi Jim

I have come across many examples of claims recorded as "crew" from bomber units and sometimes Night-fighter units. With ZG units gunners are named, but the pilots seem to claim them as theirs.

I will see if I can sort something out.

Kind Regards

Johannes

[jim norton]

hello and thanks for the initial assessments. it's strange that there are no claim lists other than those for fighter pilots and the like. at least it's documented that bomber crews also shot down aircraft. perhaps something official will surface after all...

[VtwinVince]

While technically a dive bomber, I wonder if Rudel was top scorer on the JU87?

[Johannes]

Hi Jim

There might have been an earlier typed out claims list for each KG unit, but is there was they just didn't survive, or have yet to be found.

What we have are the A.S.M listings(daily for every unit), this includes all claims for some units like LG1, but with ZG and SG units it lists the bordfunker if that was who scored and not the pilot. The very first few NJG claims here have all three crew members.

Kind Regards

Johannes

[Peter Cook]

Originally Posted by jim norton

hello!
a number of bomber crews shot down british aircraft for example during the battle of britain. is there an overview of when and who shot down whom?
all the best
jim

Hi Jim,

I don't have any listings for bomber crews, but an analysis of the RAF loss records and combat reports for the first two months of the Battle of Britain (10 July - 31 August) indicates that 25 RAF fighters were destroyed and five damaged by return fire from bombers. This is versus total approximate losses over the same period of 400 destroyed and 299 damaged.

Peter

[Nick Beale]

Originally Posted by Peter Cook

… an analysis of the RAF loss records and combat reports for the first two months of the Battle of Britain (10 July - 31 August) indicates that 25 RAF fighters were destroyed and five damaged by return fire from bombers. This is versus total approximate losses over the same period of 400 destroyed and 299 damaged.

Peter

It might also relevant to the treatment of claims that day bombers were supposed to be defended by the collective fire of a formation rather than "every man for himself".