The destroyed or lost ORBs of RAF units in France 1940

[Adriano Baumgartner]

I do agree with the other members of this Fórum that "probably" on the heat of Battle, they "had" to destroy them.

The sole two times that I managed to talk with former Major Martin Drewes (III/NJG 1), back in 1996, he told me that he ordered the Adjutant of his Gruppe to dig the Squadron War Diaries on a box. So, they are somewhere (if not destroyed by now), buried in Germany. The order was to the originals not being found by the "victors". I heard that information from him, who gave that order verbally. All claims, losses, etc..were documented there.

If scanners and digital images had been available at that time, this would have made our happiness nowadays...I can not imagine back-ups being made for those documents (ORB or Logbooks). So a sad loss for History and Air Forces...

A.