JG 301 mission on 17 Dec 44

[Don Caldwell]

Hallo Horst!

Sending one of the few RLV day units from the Berlin area all the way to the Ardennes battlefront would seem illogical, but we know that this is exactly what happened on 24 Dec to both JG 300 and JG 301. So JG 301 could have been ordered all the way to the Ardennes area on the 23rd. Reschke's Hannover-Kassel locations cannot be taken literally; they seem to have gotten stuck in his head and are used several places in his book where they don't belong. But in my mind, an additional problem with Erich's hypothesis that Reschke's 17 Dec should really be 23 Dec is Reschke's time of takeoff -- 1055 hours -- when the HBs had not even cleared England (their TOTs were 1223-52). I'm working with Erich off-line on the problem, and hope to report back to all if anything gets resolved.

Horrido!

Don