Bio info needed on Hptm. von Klitzing, Kdr III./StG51 Poland and WC

[Larry Hickey]

Hello,

Arnaud Gillet in his "British Fighter Victories" Vol I (in French), P. 246 maps an approximate reconstruction of this combat, with general impact areas of the Stuka losses. However, he does not match specific crews with crash locations, and his account of this air battle doesn't advance us much beyond what has previously been published in Brian Cull's "Twelve Days in May." Pgs. 190-193. Since there were German POWs and survivors, I'm hoping that someone, perhaps another French author, may have tracked down some of the III./StG51 survivors from this combat and interviewed them. Peter Taghon has done a lot of that type of work for Luftwaffe losses during the WC in Belgium, and I'm hoping that he has some counterpart (s) in France that might have done the same type of thing. Since Gillet's French and British victories books were done with the assistance and help of Peter Taghon, an absence of any reference to this type of material for this action in Gillet's publications indicates that probably none is known to exist, at least that PT or AG might have been aware of. Have they missed anything in the literature?

Regards,

[Larry Hickey]

Hello,

We now have a photo of the graves of Klitzing and his gunner in a cemetery at Bourdon on the Somme, probably taken not long after the end of the French Campaign. The only thing I now need to complete this research thread would be a photo of the field graves, if any, at the crash site and/or the wreckage of Klitzing's Ju87B at that site. I'm still hoping that someone either has this, or has photos of a Ju87 crash site in France from that approximate place and period which we might be able to identify as Klitzing's.

Thanx,