Unidentified 5./StG2 puma emblem on unit Stukas circa late-winter or spring, 1940

[Larry Hickey]

Hello,

In working on the profile layouts for the EOE book project for the 1939-40 period, I've run into a heretofore unidentified unit emblem for 5./StG2. This appears to be a puma/cougar/mountain lion (a critter that regularly visits my back yard in Boulder, Colorado, in the USA) with its front paws on a rock or log, superimposed upon a white shield, with probably a thin red outline. The first photo shows this on T6+EN and the second on T6+LN, so clearly this was not a personal emblem. The recognized early emblem for 5./StG2 is an aggressive penguin flapping his wings. The first photo is cropped from an image in the French Defense Dept (ECPA-D) Luftwaffe photo archive. This has been illustrated before, but other frames in the negative strip show the full a/c code of T6+EN, with the "E" probably in black with a thin white outline. The markings are sometime after mid-October, 1939, and probably the beginning of the Western Campaign of May, 1940. I'm guessing sometime around April of 1940. The second is cropped from one of at least two Bundesarchiv photos showing T6+LN in a hangar with T6+GM (clover emblem) of 4./StG2. The BA captions it winter 1939-40, which is consistent with the a/c markings, but it could also easily be spring, 1940.

So how does this fit in with the already recognized penguin emblem for 5./StG2, which is relatively rare in photography? Was the puma emblem an experiment that was not adopted, and then discontinued? There aren't a lot of photos showing Stukas actually carrying the penguin emblem either, so I'm uncertain how widespread the use of this insignia was and for how long. Does anyone have any insight into this? Are there other examples of this puma insignia known, besides the two examples shown here?

Regards,