Welcome to the thursday snapshot on the 21st of June.
The setup this week is the
Star of Africa, which pits allied Spitfires and P-40s against the Bf109F of the Luftwaffe in the deadly skies of North Africa.
Star of Africa was the nickname of the famous german pilot
Hans-Joachim Marseille.
The event starts at 3pm eastern, 21 central european time. Please come to the SEA 15 minutes early.
Marseille created a unique self-training program for himself, both physical and tactical, which resulted not just in outstanding situational awareness, marksmanship, and control of the aircraft, but also in a unique attack tactic that preferred a high angle deflection shooting attack and shooting at the target's front from the side, instead of the common method of chasing an aircraft and shooting at it from behind.
His innovative and unique attack method, which was perfected by him to a method for attacking aircraft formations, resulted in his fantastic lethality ratio, and in rapid rate multiple victories per attack, and it is what made him one of the greatest and most innovative fighter aces in history.
On June 6, 1942 Marseille attacked alone a formation of 16 P-40 fighters and shot down 6 P-40s of No. 5 Squadron South African Air Force, five of them in six minutes, including the aces Capt Pare (6 claims), Lt. Goulding (6.5 claims), and Capt. Botha (5 claims).
Marseille died on September 30th 1942 at the age of twenty two when he bailed out of his 109. The smoke filling his cockpit caused him to bail badly and strike the tail of his Messerschmitt.
