Re: все не...
>На ww2.dk указан для обеих групп только месяц перебазирования - июнь.
By mid-May 1941, while II. and III. Gruppen were familiarising themselves on their new Friedrichsat Stolp-Reitz, close to the Baltic coast, l./JG 54 had also begun converting to Bf 109Fs at Jever. This led to an even higher accident rate. Over the course of the next four weeks five of the Gruppe'snew aircraft were damaged and four completely destroyed. Four pilots were injured, the first being Gerhard Kodderitzsch on 15 May.
One of the other three was an unknown NCO of 2. Staffel, a certain Unteroffizier Otto Kittel, who came down on the island of Spiekeroog, north of Jcvcr, on 31 May. Few would then have guessed that Kittel, small of stature and reticent by nature, would rise to become JG 54's highest scorer of all before his death in action in the closing months of the war.
In addition, two I. Gruppe pilots lost their lives in accidents involving the new Friedrichs- Unteroffizier Harry Krause at Jever on 4 June, and Fahnrich Arno Gafke, who was killed in a mid-air collision with another Bf 109F over Langeoog four days later.
By contrast, II. and III./JG 54's conversion seems to have been accomplished relatively uneventfully. One pilot, 7. Staffel's \.eumant Max Clerico, was injured in an accident at Stolp-Reitz on 17 May, and exactly one month later, on 17 June, Gefreiter Liebgott of 9./JG 54 was lost when he came down in the sea off Stolpmunde.
Within 72 hours of this final accident JG 54 found itself once again re-united as a complete Geschwader- for only the second time since the outbreak of hostilities - on a cluster ol forward landing grounds around Gumbmnen, close to East Prussia's outermost frontier with the former Baltic state of Lithuania (which had been incorporated as a Republic of the Soviet Union in August 1940).
JG 54 was about to embark upon the most successful petiod in its short but eventful history. Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, would bring with it victories in hitherto unimaginable numbers. Individual scores would no longer be measured in single figures, but in dozens - and, in some cases, in hundreds. The Geschwader Heading Experten would become national heroes, feted in the press and on the weekly newsreels. But the campaign which would deliver the 'Green Hearts' their greatest triumphs, would also prove to be their ultimate Nemesis.
- Re: все не... - Константин Федченко 06.04.2004 17:44:23 (96, 749 b)
