The Eagles Over Europe Project

[Clint Mitchell]

Confirmed by photos and a written letter from Asmus where he confirms his aircraft had the DB601N, formally Mölders mount, who was flying his new Bf109F-1 on this day.

[Larry Hickey]

Hello,

For EoE Color Profiling purposes, I'm trying to acquire photos of a FL and burned out Do17P-1 from 3.(F)/11 that force-landed and burned on 11.01.40, during the Phoney War. This was a victory attributed to Lt Edmond Marin La Meslé.

In our EoE Luft loss DB, we carry this as:

3.(F)/11 Dornier Do17P-1. Engaged by Lt Edmund. Marin La Meslée and S/Lt J. Rey of GC I/5 during reconnaissance sortie over Verdun and shot down at Haucourt-la-Rigole, near Spincourt, 9.45 a.m. (Beo) Oberfw Hugo Erlbeck, (Bf) Uffz Heinrich Linsmayer, and (Ff) Uffz Johannes Sticht all captured. Aircraft 100% write-off.

This a/c appears to have a three-digit number (part of the W.Nr.) on the forward fuselage, and should carry the code 6M+_L. There are two photos that I know of showing the aircraft burning out on the ground, but I suspect that there are others that show details of its markings and insignia. A head on view published in Avions Hors Serie No25: "Les As Francais de 1939-40," P23, shows a different a/c, and attributes the loss to 2.(F)/22.

Does anyone have photos/information that confirms the unit of this a/c, shows the a/c codes, and shows the SN on the forward fuselage?

Any help will be appreciated.

Regards,


Larry Hickey
EoE Project Coordinator

[Larry Hickey]

Hello,

I don't want to reactivate the recent often-heated discussion on this board regarding the so-called "Battle of the Heligoland Bight ," but I have just posted a carefully-researched summary of British forces present that day, which settles some key points relating to that discussion, and any further conclusions concerning the Luftwaffe reporting for that day:

On the Allied Board see:

Conclusive analysis of the British a/c involved in the Battle of the Heligoland Bight: 18 December 1939.

Regards,

[Marius]

Hello Larry,

on the other side the question is how many victories were not confirmed by the Luftwaffe OKL at the end. It seems they were much more than seven. I asked for the 10.(N)/JG 26 before some time and got no response.

According to Lagebericht West 119:
Kommodore J.G. 1 - 1 Abschuss
I./J.G. 77 (in fact I./ZG 76) - 15 Abschüsse
II./J.G. 77 - 13 Abschüsse
10./J.G. 26 - 5 Abschüsse
Marineflak - 1 Abschuss
40 sm ostw. Cromer (Norfolk) - 1 Abschuss
Zusammen: 36 Abschüsse

Not confirmed:
I./Z.G. 76 - 2
II./J.G. 77 - 5
10./JG 26 - ? 1 - 4 ?
Marineflak - 1 ?
And not mentioned in the Lagebericht JGr.101 - 1 ?

Maybe the OKL knew the figure of approaching "52" bombers was not correct. "Only" 24-25 confirmed victories sounds much better than 34, 36 or even 38...

Regards,
Marius

[Larry Hickey]

Marius,

I did not answer you because I don't have any new information on that subject. It was necessary to settle the issue of whether there were 22 British a/c in the air that day or more. At the EoE project we haven't worked on the other side of that story in any definitive way, other than what Jochen Prien has already published in his books and the Heinrich Weiss translation that I sent you.

I'm totally tied up in editing for a new book right now, and won't have time to get to this personally for some time.

Regards,

[Larry Hickey]

Marius,

I've been under the impression that you had JFV Vol 2, by Prien et.al. that lists the victory claims and confirmation status of the pilots from the units that you asked about. If you don't have a copy of this, I will send you the info from this.

Let me know.

[Marius]

Hello Larry,
there is no doubt there were 22 British aircraft only participating in the raid to Wilhelmshaven.
Priens et.al. JFV Vol.2 is indeed a very interesting work (as well as all other volumes). But it is misleading when doing more detailed research. One example: I miss the info what data is documented and what is not, means just an "interpretation" of the Autors.
I wrote about the confirmed/not confirmed (?!) 5-6 victories of 10.(N)/JG 26 - all (??) achieved at 14.30 or 14.35 hours (Steinhoffs two victories ???). I still do not know how accurate are the given hours...

Another simple example to the problem with times: Oblt. Berthold Jung from 5./JG 77. According to JFV Vol.2 this pilot has 1 n.b. victory at 14.35 hours. Other sources are giving 14.50 hours.
In my opinion 14.35 hours is much too early and I wonder why exactly this time is listed in JFV. I suppose it is an "interpretation", but I cannot recognize that it is what it really is.

What I want to say: the raid from the German point of view must be researched very deeply again working with DOCUMENTED information as basis and without juggling with post-war interpretations which all seems to be incorrect.

Best wishes,

[Larry Hickey]

Marius,

What you say may be true; victory lists are a very tricky subject. I'm not sure at this point how you're going to get at more accurate information than what has been published by Dr Prien and his team. Winfried Bock does all of the victory lists for the JFV series, and he is the one who published the magazine article back in 1983 that tried to explain why the German victory claims were so high. Unfortunately, this advanced the whole idea of their being many more British aircraft present that day, but, which, of course, was based upon the original erroneous wartime German intelligence assessment, which was wrong.

You are in the same situation that Winfried faced 31 years ago: how could the German victory claims/confirmations be 400-500% too high? That is why it was so important to confirm the numbers of actual British bombers present that day, which is now certain. I'm assuming that Bock used all the information available to him and Hans Ring, who was his partner on the subject during that time. I'm not sure that more reliable information on times for the German victory claims are going to be available at this point, but I'll be the first to congratulate you if you can shed more meaningful light on the subject. I just don't know where you're going to find such information. Perhaps some of the surviving KTBs and FB may shed some light on this, but you would expect those to be consistent with the surviving "official" German records on the subject.

If you want to continue this discussion "off-board" I'm willing to do so, but I'm not optimistic you are going to find the answers that you are looking for. I'll not discourage the search, however.

Regards,

[Marius]

Hi Larry,
the JFV series is a well done and interesting work and Winfried Bock makes a superb job with the victory lists. But you must see the presented data for the year 1939 - what is my special interest as you know - have their weak points and some times of the victories, loss places and so on are pretty inaccurate. It does not matter when you have 1, 2 or 3 victories only, which differ from documented data 10, 20 or even more minutes. But in the case of 18.12.1939 this is a very special and misleading problem.

I would like to have a victory list where the reader is able to see what is documented and what is an interpretation of the authors (and I `d wish this for the whole JFV series). An example:
5./JG 77 Oblt. Pointner Wellington ... 14.20 hours (documented and confirmed)
5./JG 77 Oblt. Jung ... [14.35] hours or 14.35 or whatever (an interpretation or even just a speculation)

As a historical researcher you have no other possibility than to go to the archives and start reading the whole documents again.

Regards,

[Nick Beale]

"As a historical researcher you have no other possibility than to go to the archives and start reading the whole documents again."

I'm sure that many members of this forum will be interested to hear what you find out once you have done this.