The aerodrome at Nancy was bombed on 25 May 1944 from 07.32–39 GMT, causing severe damage to III./JG 26. The British intercepted four messages which seem to have been overlapping fragments of a full listing of the resulting aircraft losses. Because each loss was numbered (“First report”, “second report” etc.) and Gruppenstab aircraft were listed in order of fuselage tactical number, the list can be reconstructed albeit with some gaps:
Also lost in the bombing were a Go 145, apparently belonging to III./JG 26 and an He 111 of the Hermann Göring Panzer Division:
Donald L. Caldwell’s The JG 26 War Diary: 1943-1945 (Grub Street, London, 1998; ISBN 978-1898697862) describes how III./JG 26 had taken off to oppose the American raid and that it was the non-operational Bf 109s which fell victim to the bombing. Another three of the Gruppe’s machines were lost in combat with the 356th FG:
continued on next page …
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Introduction ULTRA includes many reports of individual human and material losses but very few (that I have seen) like these which give a detailed rundown of planes destroyed in an Allied bombing or strafing raid. (All times are GMT) |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
