Junkers Ju 88, Vol. 3. Day and Nightfighters. Development - Equipment - Operations 1940 - 1945.

[INM@RLM]

To your post #50, FalkeEins, I fear I did a good job of confusing you, for which, my apologies.

The words I was referring to on these pages were very specific. So:

p.9 "Ju 88 WNr. 0098, CN+NR is also identified here on p.9 by one author as "the first Ju 88 C production aircraft".
Following Peter Achs' inputs the reasonable conclusion is that this statement is erroneous. It was actually WNr. 0096 that was involved and this was not a production aircraft but rather the "prototype of the Zerstörer, first called Sa-2 (Sonderausführung 2)".
Hence, I wasn't at any point referring to "the captions on p9 & 10".

p.53 "by the other author as "the first prototype C-1 (W.Nr.0096, coded CN+NR)". Again with the benefit of Peter's clarifications the reasonable conclusion is that this statement is the more correct one. (Correct would be the first Ju 88 Zerstörer prototype.) All I would caveat this with, is that the follow-on words in the caption on p.53 of "a batch of 20 aircraft" are ambiguous, and could be read in a manner that would take you to an incorrect conclusion. In short, when it comes down to the accounting, 0096 was not one of the 20 C-1 conversions ordered from JFM by the RLM but was in addition to these 20.

Overall, it would seem that Becker did not have the same depth of data as Peter has researched, and Becker was also tempted in places into repeating observations from earlier publications that were in error.

[FalkeEins]

Thanks Nigel for additional clarifications! Thank you Peter for data that I've not seen elsewhere in posts #51 and #53. To be fair to Mr. Streetly he does say the Ju 88 V7 was not part of the Zerstörer 'programme', albeit in a slightly round about way. Pick up any other book on the Ju 88, eg Medcalf on p34 of Vol I (Classic 23) labels the photo of CN+NR as the V7....

[AndyMa]

A very minor typo.
Ju88C-1 WNr.0142, lost on 7 June 1940, is correctly given as 4D+MH in the text on Page 58, but incorrectly captioned as 4D+NH in the photo on Page 59.