German Claims in Poland 1939

[Franek Grabowski]

Marius

Originally Posted by Marius

stay cool! I don`t want to attack anybody. I only want to say, Skalski had evidently colorized the later report - so the question is how many else did (is a generous problem to all nationalities). Nobody is perfect!

Skalski over the war never colourised his reports. All his claims, but two - one damaged and one probable, from the Battle of Britain can be linked to the German losses. His later claims cannot be all verified because of losses of documents on the German side. There are several his 'claims' that were not claimed by him due to lack of evidence, I think a total of about five or more aircraft. One Skalski's claim was downgraded although it seems it is confirmed by the German losses. Another was not credited to him by no apparent reason.
A very important point is that all the reports filed in 1939 are the reports done just after the sorties. Most of the surviving ones, eg. from RAF or USAAF that are known to researchers were wrote by IOs a few days after actual sorties. There is no comparison.

According to the Bf 110 on the photo. I suppose it was the aircraft flown by Major Huth transferring with his unit to Griesslienen on the 4.9. The Bordfunker Josef Schauster was talking about this accident in Jägerblatt many years ago. The damage is indeed considerable. And apparently the aircraft was on fire as stated by Schauster.

The photo does not show any trace of fire. It shows considerable damage to the fuselage but I cannot say it was enough to consider it as a write off.

You believe that I./ZG 1 lost on 2.9. more aircraft than found in the actual known documents. So how will you explain the only total loss of 12 Bf 110 for the period September 1939 as documented on many other staff levels?

I do not believe anything. I expect you to nail down the aircraft shot up by Skalski. As long as you cannot do it, I do no take your comments that nothing happenned to it.

I will list these aircraft below (total losses):
2.9. 1 Bf 110 of I./ZG 1, 2 Bf 110 of I./ZG 76
3.9. 3 Bf 110 of I.(Z)/LG 1 (1 to German Flak)
4.9. 1 Bf 110 of I.(Z)/LG 1, 1 Bf 110 of I./ZG 1 (Huth landing accident)
6.9. 1 Bf 110 of I./ZG 1
7.9. 1 Bf 110 of I.(Z)/LG 1
9.9. 1 Bf 110 of I./ZG 76 (accident?)
17.9. 1 Bf 110 of I./ZG 76
12 at all, 3 in accidents or by friendly AA fire. No place for more totally destroyed Bf 110`s.

How about aircraft of Hammes and Nagel? Were they write offs or not? Hammes' aircraft looks almost untouched, I have seen more damaged aircraft returned to flying condition.
There is also a photo of burned out Me 110 taken from an overflying aircraft, have you identified this one?

[Pawel Burchard]

Hello Marius,

Today I acquired your 'Luftwaffe over Poland. Kampfflieger' — interesting reading without doubt. After first look I just would like to point on two details unclear to me.

Firstly there are photos of Do 17 bombers after text page 83 claimed to be 17Ms from I./K.G. 2 — the a/c on top photograph is Do 17Z without any doubt. On the photo below depcting a/c tail there is W.Nr. 1134 - a bit unclear on repro but as you have the original I assume it is indeed 1134 — according to loss reports 1134 was a Do 17Z (lost in February 1941 while with 4./K.G. 2).

Secondly, there is a report (p. 290) on crash (100%) of Do 17Z W.Nr. 1176 from Wekusta 76. Could you please confirm that above W.Nr. is not a typo because there are sources claiming 1176 was shot down 15-Sep-40 over England.

Congratulations for the extensive work,
Pawel Burchard

[G. Warrener]

Hello

I only received Cz II yesterday (herzlichen Dank) so I have not had much time to read it, and have it undermine everything I have accepted to date....

With any bombing - there will always be the matter of collateral damage.
The bombs which fell on the Villa Centros at Anin-Otwock on the 1 Sept, 1939 killed 7 children and injured 25 more. They were Jewish & handicapped.

Their future had ceased on 1st September 1939 - despite the Luftwaffe.

Graham

[Dénes Bernád]

Is this one of the Bf 110s damaged over Poland in Sept. 1939 (from eBay)?

[Franek Grabowski]

Graham

I only received Cz II yesterday (herzlichen Dank) so I have not had much time to read it, and have it undermine everything I have accepted to date....

With any bombing - there will always be the matter of collateral damage.
The bombs which fell on the Villa Centros at Anin-Otwock on the 1 Sept, 1939 killed 7 children and injured 25 more. They were Jewish & handicapped.

Their future had ceased on 1st September 1939 - despite the Luftwaffe.

For many the future ceased on 1.09.1939. For those currently living in Poland too.
I suppose your comment was provoked by the claim Luftwaffe never bombed civilian targets. Obviously, family flats were not the ones.

Dénes

Is this one of the Bf 110s damaged over Poland in Sept. 1939 (from eBay)?

It is 2N+IH of Maj. Hammes downed on 6.09.1939 over Warsaw. According to Marius it is 100% loss but for me it is almost undamaged and likely was repaired and thus should not be included in a total of 12 Me 110 written off in the Polish Campaign.

[Andreas Brekken]

Hi, Franek

Interesting comment You had in a recent post regarding Skalski...

I guess that this is a one-way street, then, since most of the German pilots which exploits You are constantly doubting using quite harsh words and carateristics are also dead. The same goes for the guys that constructed and fought in the Soviet airforce, and their equipment. You seem to have no problem with this.

My thought was always that we should treat deceased fighting men we study on either side with respect, but You see this in an other way?

Regards,
Andreas

[Franek Grabowski]

Andreas
There is a difference between discussion about exploits, level of training or technical development and calling someone liar or murderer. The latter goes to a court - see how it ended with a certain French ace for example. Mr Emmerling constantly uses a offensive language towards the Polish airmen, not only Skalski. It is not a matter of finding any overclaim, different view, poor training, etc. but calling them liars, cowards and murderers in those or another words. Please, have in mind that you cannot read the articles, as Mr Emmerling published them in Polish.

[Andreas Brekken]

Hi, Franek.

Please look into Your previous postings on this board and try to see them with a clear eye:

On one hand the rest of the research community(with this Marius which I do not know but is clearly trying to back his work up with documentation included) are told to fuck off from making questions on the validity of claims and losses when certain Polish pilots are involved, on the other this is a right You have with regards to German pilots especially.

I do not mean to be harsh with You, but an eyewitness account is an eyewitness account, nothing more, and cannot really be used as a single standing evidence without a form of material backup. It really does not matter if the person You or others have interviewed are men of honor, their story is only their own perception of what happened.

I know for a fact, from earlier work experience, that an eyewitness account can be VERY far from a description of what really happened, and the accuracy will deteriorate with factors such as stress (fright, cold conditions, hot conditions, etc etc etc etc), that You are tired, that You are experiencing physical pain, that You are hungry, thirsty, that You are using stimulants such as metamphetamin and I could go on for a long time on further factors and combinations of these. I am quite sure that any pilot flying in a combat situation will suffer from at least one of these conditions, most likely from a combination of a number of them.

Please, Franek, I am not by any means stating that any Polish pilot or fighting man is a liar or anything else, only that we have to try to find some pieces of PHYSICAL evidence in our work, to substantiate the very interesting and colourful personal accounts we have from the participants.

If we (I am now talking about the community that are interesting in telling the gripping story of the WWII air war) could agree (in UTOPIA maybe ) to maybe stop focusing on making heroes or villains, and start to work on substantiating the recollections of the combatants with documentation, the story would be maybe a bit less colourful, but a heck of a lot more truthful.

(I am of course talking about all kinds of documentation and hard evidence. A dataplate from a Bf 110, or in your case two would make this discussion a whole lot easier )

Regards,
Andreas

[Franek Grabowski]

Andreas
You do not understand!
The point is not about possible overclaim but about making false claims.
Mr Emmerling accusses Skalski of making false claim in 1941 that resulted in crediting him with an extra victory. This is a very strong accusation, which perhaps should end up in a court, especially as Mr Emmerling is not going to understand that Skalski was credited with the victory in question already in 1939. He is also not going to understand, that original Polish reports of 1939 were written in haste, are not clear and sometimes are confusing. His knowledge of Polish seems also to leave much to desire - he clearly does not understand what is written in the Polish documents.
It looks like there is a white card lying on a table but the man is saying it is black.
ID plates of any aircraft have nothing to it.
You ask for evidence.
In my reply to an article in Lotnictwo that covered combats of III/4 Dywizjon, I have included about 40 footnotes reffering to particular documents (with ref. nos), mostly originating from 1939. Mr Emmerling called them worthless.
To turn it into your categories, a certain Norwegian pilot returned with a Spitfire damaged by bits flying off a destroyed Fw 190. IIRC there is no fitting German loss. How would you feel if the pilot was called a liar, who invented the story just to cover up damage to his aircraft, possibly achieved in an accident due to low flying?

[Andreas Brekken]

Hi, Franek.

I would feel that unless there was a corresponding German loss recorded, his claim would be only that, and not IN ANY CASE an established truth. This is just being scientific, and not biased! We cannot take such a claim or personal record as more than a STARTING POINT for validating by research that the perception of the events were correct. This goes for all sides, something You are very good at mentioning when the inferior german and russian pilots are discussed, which in Your opinion are all overrated anyhow .

There should be no reason to discuss the difficulties in establishing such correspondance between claims and losses, and in my opinion it is only interesting as an colourful footnote to the history. For some reason a lot of people are totally hung up on number of kills and claims, and others on making a point of ridiculing or mistrust these 'scores', guess it is a bit of a baseball card mentality, and a need to have 'heroes' of some kind.

'Bits flying off an aircraft' is not enough to make a claim, and certainly not to claim an aircraft destroyed.... in that case the tally of the RVT german fighter pilots would be A LOT HIGHER...

I have as You probably know not followed Yours and Marius discussions in the mentioned journal. Maybe it would help if You guys could quote the original material You use with references also here? (The original text in Polish would certainly also help, as this would make the rest of us able to read what the original text says. No problem getting a native pole to translate for me at least, I have friends that can do it for me). This should then only be a cut and paset job from Your earlier discussions.

Does Your Polish documents contain a description of the wrecks as they were located after the battle? I do not know to what detail the original Polish documents describe the wrecks, but I would guess that they at least contain a description of tactical markings, engine and or WNr etc of the wrecks. This could then be a starting point for further research.

Regards,
Andreas