Reinhard Heydrich air victories?

[Leo Wess]

Bf-109E-7 (WNr. 3765), Hptm. Reinhard Heydrich - I thought that his plane was shot down flak...

[Franek Grabowski]

Originally Posted by Jan Gazda

Seems that Heydrich was shot down either by St.Lt. Aleksandr Pokryshkin or Ml.Lt. Leonid Dyiachenko from 55 IAP who both claimed a Bf 109 in the combat.
Pokryshkin went on to claim 59 aerial victories troughout WW2 and become one of the most notorious Soviet aces and 3 x HSU.

This perfectly shows low reliablility of books of the author, based on propaganda rather than documents. Neither Pokryshkin was credited with the victory nor he scored 59 kills. Check Asy velikoj otechestvennoj for further details.

[Leo Wess]

Originally Posted by Franek Grabowski

This perfectly shows low reliablility of books of the author, based on propaganda rather than documents. Neither Pokryshkin was credited with the victory nor he scored 59 kills. Check Asy velikoj otechestvennoj for further details.

The author probably had in view of victory Diyachenko July 21 1941.

[Leo Wess]

How much planes has lost II./JG 77 during flight on July 21 1941?

[Franek Grabowski]

Originally Posted by Leo Wess

The author probably had in view of victory Diyachenko July 21 1941.

No, the author (who does not speak Russian), refers to propaganda and not documents.

[robert]

But he was helped by Russian researchers. Once again your statements are not reliable and they are rather for (your) propaganda/private war purposes.

[Andreas Brekken]

Hi, guys.

Before this gets out of hand:

The original loss record from GenQu6Abt clearly state that the loss reason was 'Jägerbeschuss', thus the aircraft was hit by gunfire from an enemy fighter aircraft.

I think in general that one should be very cautious when referring to a publication if one has not also checked the original records available, but I also think one should not dismiss an authors entire production based on one factual error.

In this case Bergström seems to have the correct information.

Regards,
Andreas B

[Franek Grabowski]

Andreas
There is a problem of several factual errors in certain authors publications, originating from lack of research of either original documents or recent publications. This was stressed eg. in recent discussion on the author's Battle of Britain book, which was based on outdated sources, despite the author was awared they cannot be trusted anymore.
In this case, the author provided false information that Pokryshkin may have been responsible for the kill, and that he scored 59 kills during the war. It should have been obvious for the author if he ever checked primary documents, which do not support Pokryshkin memoirs.
Thus said, I am not going into the problem of the author's Russian collaborators, it is neither my interest nor problem. The only point is that the author was and is perceived as the only one.

[Andreas Brekken]

Hi.

OK, I was just responding to the loss reason 'discussion' here. The german side acknowledged this as being due to enemy inflicted damage by a fighter, and not Flak.

In my opinion this discussion underlines my point, that you cannot necessarily take a publication by face value only, without a natural critical attitude.

In this case we have one source or author that state the wrong loss reason all together, while another get the loss reason right, but according to your comment, not necessarily the details with reference to the pilots participating.

With regards to russian sources - where will one be able to locate claim information? Still have to go down to individual unit level documentation to get any form of details??

Regards,
Andreas B

[Jan Gazda]

Hi,

for the sake of fairness I should stress out first that the number of Pokryshkin´s kills is not a quote from Bergström but my remark only. I know Bykov credits Pokryshkin only with 46+6 but as valuable and informative as his book may be it is not flawless (the same holds for Bergström´s books of course). Pokryshkin´s number of kills is uncertain and different Russian sources give great variety of his final score ranging from 52 to 81.

As for the combat discussed in this thread no definitive answer will probably ever be known. The description of it in Bernád, Karlenko and Roba book From Barbarossa to Odessa part 1 is different from Bergström´s and is more traditional in the way that it credits Heydrich´s aircraft to AAA. On the other hand Pokryshkin describes the combat in at least two of his memoir books exactly as Bergström.

As for the propaganda issue I do not know what Franek had in mind since from my point of view hardly any author gave more sober and unbiased description of air war over Eastern front than Bergström in his books. But that might be just my opinion so maybe we should let the readers decide.

And finally I do not know if Bergström speaks Russian but I would be very surprised should he not have at least basic knowledge of Russian language given the quanta of information he had to go through for his books.

Jan