2/196 airbattle near Sardinien 29.09.1943?

[Laurent Rizzotti]

The GC I/3 formation was involved in the attack on the Ar196s and was 6 Spitfires strong. They possibly flew in patrols of 3 aircraft. I guess that both patrols attacked but as I said the first attack failed because of the fault of the leader and then probably the second patrol attacked and hit one Ar196, another crashing while trying to evade them. Another possibility is that they flew in 3 pairs but five names of pilots are given that attacked or tried to attack, so my guess is that all pilots took part of the action, but maybe not all fired.

I am not fluent in German. May you can translate your attached text above ?

[ju55dk]

Thank's for that.

The german text in short:

4 Ar 196 was flying antisubmarine patrols near the coast of Sardinia, when they were attacked by 12 spitfires. Ar 196 +DM was shot down killing the crew, and +EM then claimed a spitfire before beeing hit and set on fire. +EM was able to land on the water, and crew took to the dinghy. They were later picked up unhurt. During this battle the spits saw some transports(Ju 52) and turned against them, thus allowing the remaining 2 Ar's to escape and land safely back at base.

As to be seen there are som differencies by the paticipants on what happened, wich is of course natural, in the heat of battle.

Junker