Luftwaffe Ju 88 in Italy, July 1940

[edNorth]

veltro & Christoph,

Reading again the translation of Mr. Giliberti diary, he writes of "engineer" (i.e. Dipl.Ing. ?) "told us" he should have landed elsewhere. If this was the Bordmech. he then could have written f.e. machinist or mechanic (or equal of this in Italic)? And if Italian local-time at Gadames was 1 hrs different (earlier) from what time the German pilots log records, then the difference is not that great - if one include´s servicing after the morning flight of maybe 15 to 30 min, finished at about 11:00 local vs Dietrich recording landing at 09:32 German time + service time, second landing at about 1700 local, 15:53 German - but note Giliberti has times as "on the hour" both times) then I belive maybe only two flights were flown, both by Dietrich.

Best regards
ed

[veltro]

Ed, the "Ingenere" (engineer) was on board and Giliberti calls him with such degree.

If that man in reality was the "Bordmech" or else I cannot say, I only translated what was written in the pages of his diary and it was clear beyond doubt that he was flying with the plane ("they were flying" is reported by Giliberti and meant "we were flying" in engineer's words...)

[edNorth]

Thanks Ferdinando. Yes, Dietrich possibly was this then (he was also "pilot", else he whould not be on Bf 109F doing test flights at Rechlin the following month), he was Dipl.Ing. (at least this is written on cover of logbook) but likely three or four man crew total, I guess, so there could have been other Engineer on board, besides BM and BF. It appears Dietrich was seasoned pilot, these last two were his 4330th (08:15/09:32) and 4331st flights (14:43/15:53).