Mission: To patrol the area along XX,11 and shoot down any enemy aircrafts encountered trying to cross this line.
Pilots: At first it seemed I only had 10 pilots available as I wasn't flying myself, but sat in tower of F17 and later F21. At a late moment two extra pilots joined and these were quickly put in a flight.
I had planned on two regular flights and an escort group. These groups were made up as follows:
1st flight: (109G-10 w/ 3x20mm)
Duma
Dinger
Ibreh
Strauss
2nd flight: (109G-10 w/ 1x20mm)
Maik
Habicht
Visconti
SR2053
Gcamel
Recon flight: (109G-10 w/ 1x20mm)
AD2000
Drago
Ceray
Plan:1st flight was to take off from 17 and procede to east of field 19, where it would stand by and be ready if bombers were spotted.
2nd flight would be placed south of field 18 and be ready to take any escorts/fighters that they/recon spotted
Recon flight was to patrol from south of 17 upto 2nd flights area.
I had given free hand to the flight leaders about what altitude they were gonna patrol.
Mission details:I recieved permission to take off from Saw and I gave the order to the men. The recon flight was quickly up and I told it to go south of field 18 until flight 2 would arrive. From radar it looked like the allied would come in in an attack over the entire "front", so I ordered the scouts to go southeast of field 18 instead when flight 2 arrived.
Meanwhile flight 1 now had reach they target and started moving south towards field 22, where they met a flight of ponies that turned back south and flight 1 started following them
The recons and flight 1 that was now almost together made contact to 4 p51's and 1st flight started following the ponies that tried to drag them. Now further 4 ponies was spotted at 34K by the recons. Further cons in the distance was called out to maybe be bombers.
SR 2053 called he had visual on them and that they were c47's.
I told 1st flight to start moving east to assist 2nd flight.
Meanwhile kill messages started popping up as a sign of fighting between flight 2 plus part of the recon flight against the ponies. Odds were called out to be bad and 2nd flight lost 3 pilots in this fight (Habicht, Maik and Gcamel) while they scored 4 kills (Gcamel and SR2053(x3)). SR called out that he had killed 3 c47's and that no more was in sight.
I told our pilots to disengage if possible, when one of our recons spotted a high "allied" 109 at field 21. I don't know if it engaged, but it must have been a "freelancer".
Disengagement was not possible everywhere and Drago was being chased at field 21 at low level by a pony. It got him but was shot down by AD2000 a little later. AD was killed himself tho (I don't know if he crashed or was shot down) and now the fighting seemed to have stopped.
flight 1 didn't make it to the battle area before the fighting was over so together with the remaining 109's from 2nd flight and the recons they returned to field 18 and landed except SR2053 who made it to field 17.
Pilot results:Duma: 0 kills, Landed F18
Dinger: 0 kills, Landed F18
Ibreh: 0 kills, Landed F18
Strauss: 0 kills, Landed F18
Maik: 0 kills, Shot down (killed)
Habicht: 0 kills, Shot down (killed)
Visconti: 0 kills, Landed F18
SR2053: 3 kills (c47's), Landed at F17 [I guess a medal is in order for that
]
Gcamel: 1 kill (p51), Shot down (killed)
Drago: 0 kills, Shot down (killed)
AD2000: 1 kill (p51), Shot down (killed)
Ceray: 0 kills, Landed F18
Summary:5 kills (3 c47's, 2 p51's)
5 KIA
7 Landed (RTB)
Conclusion:I didn't realise I was gonna lead the axis operation and I had done no thoughts about what our plan was. The time preflight was very hectic (at least for me) as flight assignments, home fields, radio channels, loadouts and missions was called out as I made them up, or changed them.
From the one report I got it seems that some/all of second flight may have had gondolas attached too. Just shows how hectic things were.
Once they were airborne things settled much down for me, but maybe got more tense for the pilots. At a moment I thought it was just gonna be a fighter vs fighter match, but as I got reports of the enemy's unwillingness to fight I suspected something was being tried. Radar helped to let us know where they might would be and we succeded well in getting the bombers downed as a single pilot got away from the escort and reached the now helpless transporters.
The mission success was expensive tho as we lost 5 planes and also their pilots, of whom neither made it out alive.
Pilot reports:SR2053:
"I was flying in flight 2 as a wingmen of Visconti. We were flying as planned.
1st we saw some P51 higher than we were. We turned to them but it seemed
that they didn't want to figt right then. So Maik gave order to continue on
S.After some time we saw a 2nd flight of higher p51. They closed fast and we
started fighting. After i dodged 1st 51 i recieved order to go for the bombers. I
saw 3 co-alt dots SE of us. So i turned SE get as much as speed as possible
and started praying. I was lucky and no 51 saw my escape ( we were
fighting both flight of 51 at that time i belive). Then i saw icons and was
again lucky they were C47 so i shot them down and returned to 17."Snefens
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Ltn. Snefens
RO,
Lentolaivue 34
