"Devil's Trio in the skies of Kerch" ("Дьявольское трио в керченском н

[Boris Ciglic]

Hi all,

I'd like to point to a excellent book in Russian/Ukrainian language entitled "Дьявольское трио в керченском небе" by Ivan Lavrinenko which has been published in Kyev a few days ago and which I just received.

The book follows the careers of Gerhard Barkhorn, Helmut Lipfert and Otto Fönnekold over Kerch from 1 November 1943 till 11 April 1944. There aren't some unknown or spectacular photos of the trio of aces in the book (even if there are some very nice photos of them inside, as well as portraits of many of their victims), but it's true value is in the text. Each of their claims has been painstakingly researched in Soviet documents and it brings answers to questions which are frequently asked on this forum whenever there is a talk about aces: who were their opponents and what did they actually achieve.

In the period covered in the book, Barkhorn claimed 72 victories, Lipfert 45 and Fönnekold 50. According to Ivan's research, 29 of Barkhorn's kills can be 100% verified and there is a fair chance that he scored 12 more, for Lipfert it is 25 plus 8, and for Fönnekold 31 plus 9. Interestingly, although we discussed here about Lipfert and high percentage of his verifiable claims (at least over Hungary later on - thanks to HGabor), Fönnekold was even better in it, at least in given time frame.

The paperback book has 266 pages in A5 size, 96 photos (if I counted correctly), a dozen or so documents and six detailed appendixes. How much it costs - I have no idea.

Book's major "flaws" are that it has been published in just 50 examples (and I have no clue if any of them remained for sale) and that it is in a language which just a few in the west can understand.

I sincerely hope that somebody from the aviation publishing business in the west will see this thread and consider translating it into English or German, as I'm sure that such a highly interesting theme would find a good response from the readers.

Cheers,
Boris


PS the author has provided his email in the book (as well as on warsport.ru web portal where he contributes regularly) so I suppose it isn't a problem that I'm sharing it here

ivan_l#ukr.net (change # with @)

https://warspot.ru/users/17612-ivan-lavrinenko