What do you make of this? Lydia Litvyak shot down FW-190

[6./ZG26_Emil]

OK granted it was 4 weeks after the Battle of Stalingrad ended but from what I've read Lydia Litvyak claimed a shared kill on a FW-190 at the beginning of March in the Stalingrad area. If this is the case I doubt that would have been the first flight the 190 had made there, so is it possible that the FW-190 was flying over/near Stalingrad in the time window of BOS.

[Cybermat47]

I have to admit, I don't really see your point...

 

The 190 is going to be in BoS.

[6./ZG26_Emil]

really?

 

Most people seem to think the FW-190 didn't see service over Stalingrad. According to her biography she was posted near Stalingrad and got a shared kill on a FW-190 on Feb 11th and a full kill on a 190 on March 1st. The first is less than two weeks after the capitulation of the Germans at Stalingrad.

 

My point is that if this is the case how is it that people are so sure the 190 didn't see service over Stalingrad, they might not have been fighting over the city in the initial assault but it seems possible ground attack 190s were in operation after the encirclement or during Little Saturn.

[Cybermat47]

Oh, I thought you were saying that it should be in the game. My mistake

[Lord_Haw-Haw]

 

OK granted it was 4 weeks after the Battle of Stalingrad ended

So are you trying to say that 4 weeks after the battle is still the battle?

German records which aircraft took part are very exact and I have no reason to doubt csThors information about

the FW190. I don´t see this thread going anywhere productive, it seems more just to stir up doubt for a anything

goes mentality in my opinion.

[6./ZG26_Emil]

11th of Feb is 9 days after the capitulation of Stalingrad. She was based at Kotielnikovo and shared a victory of a FW-190. Do you really think they arrived that day and took to the air in combat operations and then at least one was shot down the same day? Or more likely they'd been there a little bit longer maybe weeks...who knows. There is very little information on the LW side from what I've seen to definitively say either way so I was interested to see such a claim from a Soviet pilot.

 

Anyway thanks for the pedantic reply

[TetraD]

russians also claimed that they shot down finnish macchis and fw 190's. But we are getting fw 190 for BOS so why we are even discussing about this? 

[6./ZG26_Emil]

russians also claimed that they shot down finnish macchis and fw 190's. But we are getting fw 190 for BOS so why we are even discussing about this? 

 

Because I am curious about where they came from and whether they are legitimate claims. If they are legitimate then 190s were operating in the Stalingrad area close to the end of the actual Battle and during Operation Little Saturn, if that is the case then they could have been there a little earlier since they would have had to move airfields and have ground support units etc.

 

consider this a historical curiosity/discussion rather than an argument for having 190s on ever server in the game It has been virtually accepted that 190s didn't serve during the Stalingrad campaign and there has been quite some indignation about their inclusion in BOS.

[csThor]

Given that the Luftwaffe claimed "Mustangs" in early 1943 over Leningrad I'd not put too much emphasis on types in kill claims. Here, I think, the most likely contender would be an IAR 80/81 since no Fw 190 was anywhere near Kotelnikovo at that time.

Edited September 2, 2013 by csThor

[6./ZG26_Emil]

 I was wondering about the IAR 80 it could easily be mistaken for a 190.

 

Do you have a full ORBAT and losses for LW during this period? I've struggled for find anything complete.

[csThor]

Losses, no ... they're stored in the Quartermaster reports and those are in the archives (i.e. Bundesarchiv). OOBs I tend to extract from the books I have and in the specified timeframe I am absolutely sure that all Fw 190s on the Eastern Front have been far away (at Leningrad and in the central zone).

[Jaws2002]

All the IAR-80/81's involved at Stalingrad were sent back to Romania in January. Anything that couldn't be serviced by German ground crew, in Romanian airforce was sent away from Stalingrad.

The Polish and French planes in December, IAR-80/81s and JRS-79B in January. Only the Romanian Bf-109's and He-111's remained on the front, because they formed mixed units and could be serviced by German aircrew. 

 

So I doubt she met IAR-80s in March.

Edited September 2, 2013 by Jaws2002

[6./ZG26_Emil]

Well it's obviously going to be one of those unsolved mysteries because there are at least three female pilots who said they shot down two or more FWs when they were based out of that airfield and they were fairly experienced pilots.

[csThor]

Hmmm ... wI had suspected as much, but being at work doesn't leave much room for research (at least my boss thinks so ). I guess it mut have been a misidentification, hardly surprising given the use of "Eyeball Mk. 1" as only means of spotting/identifying aircraft. But, as I said, mis-IDs were common and not limited to one nation (see Luftwaffe, early 1943, Leningrad and "Mustangs").

[Matt]

Didn't the Germans use some captured La-5s?

 

Not sure if they did during that time.

[DB605]

Well it's obviously going to be one of those unsolved mysteries because there are at least three female pilots who said they shot down two or more FWs when they were based out of that airfield and they were fairly experienced pilots.

 

Again,russians also claimed that they shot down probably hundreds of "finnish fw 190", wich of course never existed. So again, most probably "mystery" here is simply misidentifying.

[csThor]

Didn't the Germans use some captured La-5s?

 

Not sure if they did during that time.

 

No, they tested some for sure but that was back in Germany. Germany did not use captured aircraft (apart from a handful of transports) and certainly no La-5s.

[6./ZG26_Emil]

Again,russians also claimed that they shot down probably hundreds of "finnish fw 190", wich of course never existed. So again, most probably "mystery" here is simply misidentifying.

 

Yeh could be but we are talking about at two or three pilots who correctly identified 109s several times, you'd be more inclined to believe they'd misidentify a 190 as a 109. One possibility I suppose is that there was some kind of FW hysteria coming from other parts of the Eastern front as the 190 started to make an appearance, or as unlikely as it might seem they were used in small numbers and it's either not documented or the documents are destroyed/lost although it seems that virtually cannot be the case.

[JG5_Schuck]

Hey Emil,

Just to add my bit.

I checked through my copies of Black Cross Red Star, and Battle over Stalingrad and cross referenced with A Pair of Aces (all by Christer Bergstrom), and i can find no mention of 190's in the Stalingrad area at that time.

Luftflotte 4 shows no 190s in Order of Battle from November 42 to the surrender of Stalingrad and for several weeks after.

And the Generalquartiermeister der Luftwaffe shows no record of any 190 losses in the area for that time period either.

So i would agree, a case of misidentification. Whether they should be in BoS, from an historically accurate point of view, i dont think so.

But i love them, so im  glad that they are!!

[Heywooood]

only thing we know for sure is there are no absolutes, especially in war...maybe a handful of 190's were there, off the books...

 

Nations at war still do that - look at the stealth helo's used to capture (oops) OBL