Stuka in Aeroplane II/05. Nice Story and Plenty Errors!

[Tony Williams]

The perennial problem of using secondary sources is that you don't know which sources they used. In practice, most authors copy from each other because it's much easier than digging out the primary sources. So mistakes get handed down like heirlooms.

I have traced that '15mm MG 151 in the Bf 109's cowling' error back to William Green in the 1960s. Perhaps it was his mistake, perhaps he got it from somewhere else. It's been shown to be an error long since, but it keeps chugging along

What you need to do is to find an author who takes an active interest in the specific aspect of the subject. As I'm a gun and ammo specialist, I'm more likely to make mistakes in dealing with the aircraft than their armament. I've always found Manfred Griehl to be very good on the armament of German planes, Bill Gunston is usually reliable on British ones.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion
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[Mirek Wawrzynski]

27.1.05
By mistake I have send the post not on the wrong side, my fult so I sending right stroy to right track - sorry.

Thanks for your letter and additional inputs about this post. I would like to add some new one which has surfaced.
Tchev’s bridge was a double bridge (one was for trains and second for trucks, cars, ect. - on Vistula river he was a big construction). Its damages were repaired by German (building provisional construction) after 40 days. The main person who had done these severe damages (and stopped for a while German advance was sapper (Second Lieutenant) podporucznik Norbert Juchtman (of 15. Infantry Division) who done his job in spite of 3./StG 1 action and blow up the bridge. He was KIA on 22 IX 1939 (he was coming from Pruszkow - the town where now I am living).
Ju 87 in RAF in Hendon. Going back to dr Alfred Price material I see quite strange thing.
See p.84. Ju 87 Stuka Survivors. Ju 87D-5 W.Nr494083 (coded R1+JK) is not a Dora-5 as many thinking (in Aeroplane for example). This is real Gustav. So any additional equipment which was standard for Stukas (rebuilding means removing all which is standard for dive-bomber: dive-brakes, racks for bombs, sirens and instead giving 2xBK37 mm.
In fact the plane done 1943/44 as a W.Nr2883 as a Dora-5 (some sources say Dora-3) and later was modified into Gustav (could be then -1 or -2), when he got a new number W.Nr494083. So this is not a real Stuka - dive-bomber but real Panzerknacker - tank-destroyer. See Peter C. Smith book “Ju 87 Stuka” p. 219. On the photo in Aeroplane is seen his left side of Gustav where is also painted a symbol of the tank-destroyer unit. I know that same creasy passionate (or idiots would be better, or historical barbarian who are everywhere) would like to have real dive-bomber instead tank-destroyer, so they do all to make a dive bomber and would hang bombs under him (this is real idiot’s ideas but such is a life, any historical respect attitude to the past). Such “well done” materials like this one in Aeroplane are very helpful for them (it is written in respected magazine, by very well know aviation author, it is not)!
On the same page p.84 in Aeroplane is a photo of Italian Ju 87 R-2 (additional fuel tank well seen on he photo) not any Ju 87 Berta as is written blow. This photo I thing do not come form November 1942 rather from 1941. In November 1942 there was not any operational Italian Ju 87 unit (they were lost in combats, operations 1940-41).

Finishing my list of remarks to one rather short story I have done it to present how much wrong could be done with one material and how much false opinion could be later created (this is a tyranny of Status Quo, because is written in famous magazine, by famous author, with Dr’s title before the name).

All the best,

Mirek Wawarzynski