29.01.2013

Daily ebay scan - prayer card related to Norway

One of the research sources at least I as a Norwegian was oblivious to is the prayer cards. A prayer card is more or less an obituary, printed as a remembrance of a deceased family member.

The prayer card reproduced below is currently on sale on ebay.de and states that the person in question lost his life serving in Norway in a Kampfgeschwader - translated into english this is a bomber squadron.

Research reveal that he was not assigned to a bomber squadron at the time of his death - he was a pilot in a unit called Fliegerführer Nord, a staff unit which had the area command of parts of northern Norway.

Wilhelm Mayer was the pilot of a Junkers Ju 52 which flew into the mountain ridge Tønnølfjellet near Oksvoll, en route from Banak to Værnes with soldiers on leave, killing all crew members except Eugen Ruoff, 7 members of II./KG 30 and one from Fliegerhorstkommandantur Banak.

Kjell Sørensen provides information on the loss on his excellent site:

http://ktsorens.tihlde.org/flyvrak/oksvoll.html



28.01.2013

Daily ebay scan - JG 52 photo with a history

The following two photographs are currently for sale at ebay.de. Interestingly the seller provides a date, location and unit - 20.09.1941, Hamsteede, 2./JG 52.

Upside down in the camo netting

He also states that the aircraft is a Bf 109E, but it is a F-model.

This is defined as a 65% loss
In my database I have this loss registered as:

Loss info from my database


25.01.2013

6. Abteilung des Generalstabes der Luftwaffe (Generalquartiermeister) - part IV a

This is the third installment covering the Gruppe I in the organizational chart of the 6. Abteilung des Generalstabes der Luftwaffe (Generalquartiermeister). I have decided to split this post in a part a and b, simply due to the fact that there is so much to write about!

The responsibilities and staff size of division I C was:

 Zusammenfassende Berichterstattung (Summary reporting on current events),

Erfassung und Zusammenstellung der materiellen und personellen Verlustmeldungen (Registration of loss records for equipment and personnel, and preparation of loss reports),

(Führung des Reichsmarschallbuches) (Responsible for the Reichsmarschalls book),

Bearbeitung der Beutemeldungen (Handling of the reports on captured equipment),

Führung der Lagenkarte (Responsible for the situation maps),

Kriegstagebuch der 6.Abteilung (Responsible for the war diary of the 6. Abteilung),

Verantwortliche Überwachung der Aktenführung der Gruppe (Responsible for the groups archives and their archive procedures),

Wahrnemung der Aufgaben des Bürooffiziers (Responsible for the tasks of the Office leader - a position in the staff of the group).

The personnel staff of division I C was 1 Officer with general staff rank and education, 1 Officer from the flying units and 7 office clerks and typists.

To the Luftwaffe researcher the I C unit is definitely best known as the unit producing the daily loss records. These daily records evolved during the war, in their purest form they contained information on loss date, unit, loss reason, location, details on the aircraft and personnel involved and so on.

I include three example pages from a loss report, to give those that have not seen one of these yet, a bit of insight on how they look, and what they contain. I count myself lucky that I have finally finished my project on turning all the available records into .pdf files - and most of the records from them have been transferred to a relational database making them searchable.

The first example page show the front page of the report of July 4th 1941. Note the document reference designation in the top left corner, Genst.Gen.6.Abt.(IC) Nr. 3620/41 G.Kdos. Written out this reads Generalstab Generalquartiermeister 6. Abteilung (IC) Nr. 3620/41 Geheime Kommandosache. The IC and number naturally show that this document which was record number 3620 of the year 1941 produced by the unit.

In the top left corner we find the date, and where the document was made (H.Qu. - Hauptquartier) - and the fact that it was made out in 21 copies, of which this is copy number 17! More about that later.

Front page of loss record document with corrections
As one can see this document contains a number of corrections - both on names, crew fates, Werknummer of aircraft and loss reasons. It is apparent that the documents were at least reviewed on the higher headquarters level, and compared to what they had reported to the Generalquartiermeister. I will return to the procedures involved in the registration and transfer of loss records in a later post.

The ordinary loss page as seen below contain the detailed information on the individual loss. From left to right we have:

  • Lfd.Nr. which is simply a running number for each record (which make it rather easy to cross reference, as can be seen by how the correction are formatted in the previous page)
  • Datum - date of the loss
  • Verband - unit involved
  • F/H  - Feindflug or Heimflug - indicating if this was an operational or non-operational flight (in the case of damage on the ground by strafing, bombing or sabotage this would be marked F)
  • Ort (auftrag) - Location if this was known - locations enclosed in parentheses indicate that the location where the loss occured is unknown and the listed location is the target of the flight)
  • Ursache - loss reason
  • Flugzeugmuster - aircraft type and model
  • Werk-Nummer (Kennzeichen) - Build number of the aircraft, and in the eventuality of missing personnel, the unit code is usually included in parentheses.
  • Bruch % - Damage percentage as assessed by the reporting unit.
  • Ersatz erforderlich - Indicator of the need for an replacement aircraft
  • Dienstgrad - rank of the personnel
  • Zu - und Vorname - Last and first names
  • Dienststellung - function within the crew of the aircraft
  • Tote - number of dead personnel for the relevant line
  • Verletzte - number of wounded personnel for the relevant line
  • Vermisste - number of missing personnel for the relevant line


Page showing individual aircraft and personnel loss records
There are a few more interesting things on this page - firstly one can see that the records have been corrected a lot in handwriting - on the original pages this is in red pencil and easier to read than on this grayscale scan from a microfilm. All the corrections can be found in subsequent reports and thus cross referenced.

The other thing I related to which issue this copy of the loss record is, and I will reveal this finding shortly, as we move on to the last example page I am going to show, namely the last page of the report document for this day:

Last page of daily report
Looking at this page one can see the summary information of the records for this date, and the total numbers for July 1941.

What was interesting for me to note when I first started working on these documents was the Verteiler list in the bottom left corner.

As we can see there was a large number of copies made  - and from this list one can see who received it:

  1. Reichsmarschall - Göring's copy
  2. Staatssekretär der Luftfahrt und Generalinspekteur der Luftwaffe
  3. Chef des Generalstabes
  4. Luftwaffe Führungsstab Ia
  5. Luftwaffe Führungsstab Ic (Presse)
  6. Generalquartiermeister
  7. Generalluftzeugmeister
  8. Luftwaffe Personalamt Chefabteilung
  9. Luftwaffe Personalamt Chefabteilung
  10. Luftwaffe Personalamt Chefabteilung
  11. Luftwaffe Personalamt I/IV
  12. Luftwaffe Personalamt I/IV
  13. L. D. - I am unsure about what this unit was
  14. Chef für Flugsicherheit
  15. L. E. 2 - I am also unsure at the moment what unit this is
  16. Generalstab Generalquartiermeister 2. Abteilung
  17. Generalstab Generalquartiermeister 6. Abteilung (Ib, II, III)
  18. Generalstab Generalquartiermeister 6. Abteilung (Ib, II, III)
  19. Generalstab Generalquartiermeister 6. Abteilung (Ib, II, III)
  20. Generalstab Generalquartiermeister 6. Abteilung (IC)
  21. Generalstab Generalquartiermeister 6. Abteilung (IC)

I think this is of importance with regards to efforts on locating the missing records of 1944 - as the number of copies was rather large, it is not unlikely that one of the copies for at least some of the dates are hiding in a unmarked book somewhere still.

The observant reader noticed that we are looking at copy number 17 - thus the copy sent to Generalstab Generalquartiermeister 6. Abteilung (IB) - the statistics people. What I found while reading working on the documents were a set of encodings for statistical use. Not all the available copies are the ones delivered to Generalstab Generalquartiermeister 6. Abteilung (IB), and on the copies delivered to the other units the encoding is missing.

What I am talking about is the pencilled roman numerals in the left margin, as can be seen on the second example page with the detailed loss information - and the arabic numeral pencilled in before the F/H column. These are the encodings used to transcribe the unit information and categorize the loss reason for the Summarische Verlustmeldungen - summary loss records.

Using record number 14 as an example, the roman numeral I indicates that this aircraft loss should be entered on the sheet for I./S.K.G.210. In this case the loss should be entered in the category 2 column of the summary loss record, with loss date July 1st 1941 and reporting date July 4th 1941. The loss numbered 15 should be in category 1. Are they there...?

Example of summary aircraft loss record sheet for I./S.K.G.210
They definitely are. And so are the personnel involved on the summary personnel loss record sheet, one dead and one wounded crew member:


This of course help us when we are trying to piece together the loss records of the missing year 1944 - we have the summary loss record for that year - and thus we are at least able to get an overview on a statistical level of the losses sustained by the Luftwaffe during that fateful year. For the next part of the series I will add even more sources to the list!



Black 3 of 14.(Jabo)/JG 5 on display in Bodø

The restored Black 3 of 14.(Jabo)/JG 5 has now been assembled and added to the static collection at the Norsk Luftfartsmuseum at Bodø in Norway.

Pristine paint job - I doubt it looked this good while in service!

A few smaller pieces not yet assembled - but still looking good!

What one could have given for a working BMW 801

22.01.2013

6. Abteilung des Generalstabes der Luftwaffe (Generalquartiermeister) - part III

This is the second installment covering the Gruppe I in the organizational chart of the 6. Abteilung des Generalstabes der Luftwaffe (Generalquartiermeister).


The responsibilities and staff size of division I B was:

 Zusammenfassende Auswertung der Einsatzbereitschaft der Luftwaffe in personeller u. materieller Hinsicht und der Rüstungsstatistik (Combination and evaluation of the readiness status with regards to personnel and equipment),




Statistische Erfassung und Auswertung aller materiellen und personellen Verluste der Luftwaffe und Auswertung für Terminmeldungen (Recording and analysis of statistics on the losses of equipment and personnel in the Luftwaffe for use in periodical reporting),





Erfassung und Auswertung der monatlichen Flugzeugbewegungsmeldungen (
Recording and analysis of the monthly reports on movement in unit aircraft strength),

Zusammenfassung der Monatsmeldungen (Responsible for combining the monthly reports).


The personnel staff of division I B was two Beamte (this indicating that they did not necessarily need to be military personnel and could be civil servants),  1 A. (I think this is an artist or maybe just Angestellter - a general worker or office clerk?), 8 Zeichner (artists with drawing as main area of expertise) 1 A./Soldat (Steindrucker) which would be a clerk or soldier of non-officer rank doing litographic work. In addition there was the shared staff of 8 typists, shared with division I A.

Examples of the documents which is still surviving from this unit is the "Übersicht über Soll, Istbestand, Einsatzbereitschaft, Verluste und Reserven der fliegenden Verbänden", the example shown below from the reporting date of January 11th 1941:

Overview of established strength, actual strength, loss numbers and other statistical data from division I B
Other examples are the strength reports for the individual units - and one can easily understand why a rather large number of artists would be necessary in the unit:

Aircraft and personnel strength report for ZG 76 on January 25th 1941

6. Abteilung des Generalstabes der Luftwaffe (Generalquartiermeister) - part II

This blog post starts the coverage of the Gruppe I in the organizational chart of the 6. Abteilung des Generalstabes der Luftwaffe (Generalquartiermeister).

As stated in the first post of this series, this unit was responsible for organization and evaluation - resources, aviation fuel and loss registration and interpretation - for the entire Luftwaffe.

The Gruppe I was divided into five subdivisions, named

I A, I B, I C, I D and I S

The responsibilities and staff size of division I A was:

 Organisatorische Maßnahmen auf dem Gebiet der Rüstung, des Nachschubs und der Beuteerfassung, (Organizational responsibility for armament, resupply and evaluation of captured equipment and supplies)

Zusammenfassende Bearbeitung aller die Abteilung betreffende Rüstungs- und Nachschubfragen (General responsibility for handling all topics related to armament and resupply),

Rüstungslage im Großen (General armament situation),

Überwachung und Vereinfachung des Meldewesens (Supervision and simplification of the reporting systems),

Bearbeitung grundsätzlicher Verfügungen und Anordnungen betr. Einsatzbereitschaft der Fliegertruppe, Flakartillerie und Ln.-Truppe (Handling of the general orders, instructions and decrees related to the readiness state of the flying units, anti-aircraft units and aviation intelligence units),

Überwachung der Kontingentierung der Roh- und Werkstoffe vom Standpunkt der Führung (Supervision of the allocation of raw materials and other production materials from a management point of view),

Zusammanfassende Bearbeitung der Abgaben an verbündete und befreundete Mächte (General responsibility for handling topics related to deliveries to allied and befriended nations).


The personnel staff of division IA was 1! officer with general staff rank and education. In addition he shared a staff of 8 typists with division I B.

21.01.2013

Daily ebay scan - Wiener-Neustädter-Flugzeugwerke

A large series of images showing the daily life and work at the Wiener-Neustädter-Flugzeugwerke is currently on offer from the seller rupertmaria as single photos on ebay.de

The quality seems to be excellent and the photographs were most likely taken by a professional photographer.

Overview of the factory
Heinkel He 111 G1 + DA of KG 55
The other side of G1 + DA
Possibly WNr 1423 lost on April 4th 1941 as G1 + DN of II./KG 55
Possibly WNr 1605, but definitely an aircraft from KG 54
+ KP of an unknown unit

Flak damaged +CT of an unknown unit

Possibly the other side of the flak damaged + CT?

Daily ebay scan - Mystery Do-17 on a beach - Norway?

A photograph of a Dornier Do 17 marked with an individaul aircraft letter K in white is currently on offer from the seller roman69.

Photo of Dornier Do-17 'Weisse K' currently for sale on ebay.de
 
This Dornier 17 obviously force-landed on a beach has been a small mystery to me and others cooperating on the identification of individual losses of the Luftwaffe. I have copies in my collection of four other photographs showing the same aircraft, and have seen at least one additional one.

Cockpit area - possibly a crew member in the water trying to rescue some belongings?
What are we going to do now...
A rather large group of spectators have gathered on the beach
A better quality print showing that the last letter of the code was H

It has been speculated that this is A6 + KH from 1.(F)/120, and that the location and time is spring/summer 1940 near Stavanger in Norway.

We have however not been able to identify the loss from contemporary loss records, and thus this is still a mystery. If anyone can add any information even if it is just speculation or ideas - please add a comment.

19.01.2013

My photo collection - part 002

As a means of getting help in identifying som intriguing photographs from my collection - and just be able to share some of them - I will from time to time post photographs from my collection under this title.

I will update the captions as I get feedback from the community.

Beautiful view of a Bf 109E of  Stab Jagdführer z.b.V in the far north. This aircraft show a particular feature only seen on the aircraft on the front in the far north for a very short period of time, namely a yellow tailband.



My photo collection - part 001

As a means of getting help in identifying som intriguing photographs from my collection - and just be able to share some of them - I will from time to time post photographs from my collection under this title.

I will update the captions as I get feedback from the community.

As far as I know this show a captured Polikarpov I-16. The aircraft appear to be all metal apart from the cowling that seems to be white.

ebay images - Kriegsmarine and commercial vessels

ebay seller topp11 currently offer a few nice Kriegsmarine images taken in Norway.

These two primarily caught my eye:

Z7 and Z28 in Bogen byNarvik in 1942
Zerstörer Z-15 and submarine said to be in the Altafjorden in 1943
Also - this image of the smoking Norwegian tanker Larsen after an aerial attack in 1942 was interesting - I have to check exactly which attack this was:

Tanker Larsen after aerial attack. Note anti aircraft gun emplacement at the bow



ebay images - Who owned this car?

The german armed forces where no stranger to siege both private property and military equipment in the occupied countries. This image show a Norwegian car - with the registration number O-1665.

The registration indicates as far as I know that the aircraft were registered in the Oppland county, and I am sure that some of the very knowledgable car nuts over at the excellent IPMS Norway discussion group will be able to identify the car and come up with the previous owner!

O-1665

Keeping an album together - Sola airfield April 1940

For a researcher, historian or archaeologist for that case,  it is of major importance to be able to establish a link between time, object and location.

Over the last years thousands of WWII images have been traded off on the major online (and offline)  auction sites - the source often being albums created by ordinary soldiers keeping a photographic record of their service time. The number of crystal clear images of the technology of warfare - tanks, aircraft and marine vessels of good quality - are few and far between, while the daily life of the common soldier, showing army, navy or airforce buddies, living quarters and panoramic sights are plentiful.

The result is of course, due to the fact that the commercial value of the few technical images (in lack of a better designation) often seem to be several hundred or even thousand times the value of the rest of the images in an album, that the commercially oriented trader will split the album and sell of the good stuff - and as I have seen in several instances - simply let the rest end up lining a trashcan.

I though i should use this space to show one of the albums in my collection, where most of the images would I believe been worth next to nothing in any respect if the album had been split up and traded off - I would guess most of the photographs would have been trash by now.

Together - they form a whole which tell a story - the story of a common soldier in a Flugbetriebskompanie - airfield operating unit (anyone got a better word, please comment and I will update!) - in a foreign location in time of conflict.

Enjoy! And please comment if you like to add information that I can enter into the captions.

Title page

Daily life of a common soldier

Transport from Germany to Norway

First view of Norway

Overview of Sola airfield with aircraft from different units

Top left a Ju 52 destroyed in a strafing attack on April 10th 1940,  and bottom right Norwegian Caproni Ca 310 ´507´

Top right a Bf 109 of II./JG 77 scrambling. Bottom left the smoke from a damaged German aircraft in the background with two He 111 of KG 26 and a Ju 52 in the foreground. The leftmost He 111 carry the individual aircraft letter ´C´. 

Bunker and an overview of the airfield

Duty on the airfield

Local surroundings

Fire!

Some paid the ultimate price of being in a conflict. Bottom center the graves of to British airmen.

More graves with names and unit designations

Daily life

Sightseeing

Daily life

Sightseeing

Maintenance in the large hangar at Sola

Daily life

More sightseeing

Firing range

Living quarters

Attention!

Daily life

Daily life

Buddies

Unit colleagues

Daily life - and the transport home