JG 54 near Leningrad in August, 1942

[Jochen Prien]

Dear Andrey Dikov,

thanks for your kind comments. Our claims lists are based on the original sources - as far as available to us - and made up from them; we do not lean on Tony Wood's lists and we have so far made no synopsis to find out which one of ours may be in his lists and which not. Therefore I cannot answer your questions. I can only and strongly recommend that you refrain from working with the old claims lists altogether until the publication of the current list in JFV Vol 9 / III.

As far as the claims lists of JG 77 are concerned they on the basis of the recent findings needed a complete work over as compared with the old lists of the JG 77 unit history. This of course also applies to the part of the operations around Leningrad that you are interested in. When the unit history was written some 15 years ago much of the data now availabe had yet to be unearthed, hence the many claims marked as "*", meaning that they were provisionally only, lacking documentary proof. A very similar situation exists around the old claims list of JG 53 in the East in Vol. 2 and 3 of the JG 53 history.

Hope this helps.

Jochen Prien