Friday 26 August 2011

Aerojournal 22 - Barbarossa, Nachtjagd


A few corrections to the captions in the 'Nachtjagd' article published by CJE (Chris Ehrengardt) in his latest Aérojournal issue 22 (June-July 2011)

Firstly, top page 14, a Focke-Wulf 190 presuming to be the : « Fw 190 A-8 'white 9' flown by Feldwebel Günther Migge of 1.NJGr. 10 …under the boars head is the inscription Kognak Pumpe..».


It's not. CJE has actually published a heavy pixelated image of  Fw 190 A-6 « Ederle » (little boar), an aircraft which also served with NJGr. 10, but which is clearly not the Fw 190 A-8 assigned to Günther Migge. Migge's Neptun radar equipped A-8 'white 9' is reproduced in good quality (although low res) here..click on the image for a fast loading full screen view...

Note the clear view of  "white 14" in the background  - there is a discussion in an oldish thread on-going at scalemodels.ru as to whether this is "white 11" or not !
http://scalemodels.ru/modules/forum/viewtopic_t_17767_start_20.html



Lower picture on page 19 of his article, CJE publishes a poor quality pic of Fw 190 A-6 WNr. 550453 flown by Hauptmann Friedrich-Karl « Nasen » Müller which he captions as being 'probably'  « blue 3», since Müller flew in the Geschwaderstab of JG 300. From the Lorant/Goyat history of JG 300 we know for a certainty - as per Müller's flight log - that the aircraft of the Geschwaderstab of JG 300 had green Kennziffer or numbers in 1943. These aircraft were moreover based at Bonn-Hangelar and not at Rheine as CJE claims in his caption. Müller's 190 is seen here in October 1943 displaying sixteen night victory markings on the rudder. Note that the pilot's head armour has been removed as a weight-saving measure.



The picture of the Fw 190 on page 9 of CJE's article has been published many times previously  - it is not an aircraft belonging to JG 300 or NJGr. 10. It is certainly not a machine belonging to 2./JG 300, which was a Bf 109 G equipped Staffel. Nor was Deelen home to any units of JG 300, even if the occasional Wild boar of JG 300 might have put down here prior to flying back to their home base.

The image on page 10 is the well-known photo of a Bf 109 G of I./JG 302 in front of the terminal at Malmi - once again not a photo of a I./JG 300 Gustav, since this Staffel never operated in Finland. Nor did the 'pathfinders'of Horst Bengsch as mentioned on page 13 provide navigational assistance for JG 300.