I was given this picture by my uncle last week. It was taken at Hildesheim (sp?) around Feb/March 1946 and shows the scrapheap he had to clear. I can recognise a 109 fuselage and I reckon that’s a Spitfire just left of centre? I don’t know about the wing in the foreground.
The bit I found interesting was that he said there were several RAF types there, Lysanders and Spits were named, that had been fitted with Luftwaffe instruments. I wondered if perhaps the airfield had used captured types for evaluation here. Does anyone know for sure?
By: mike currill - 2nd March 2005 at 12:17
You are most welcome Skypilot. Goes a small way to repaying the debt I owe to members of this forum for their “I will help if I can” attitude as they have provided me with sought after information which I have either not had access to or not had time to hunt down.
By: skypilot62 - 2nd March 2005 at 09:44
Well I never! I certainly remember reading the book as a wee young lad and then finding out that there had indeed been a KG200. So my uncles memory was spot on then – excellent stuff, thanks Mike!
Sadly that’s the only photo he’s got apart from one of him sat on a blinkin big German bomb awaiting collection.
By: mike currill - 2nd March 2005 at 09:15
I was given this picture by my uncle last week. It was taken at Hildesheim (sp?) around Feb/March 1946 and shows the scrapheap he had to clear. I can recognise a 109 fuselage and I reckon that’s a Spitfire just left of centre? I don’t know about the wing in the foreground.
The bit I found interesting was that he said there were several RAF types there, Lysanders and Spits were named, that had been fitted with Luftwaffe instruments. I wondered if perhaps the airfield had used captured types for evaluation here. Does anyone know for sure?
Yes the spelling is correct, I actually served there in 74/76 as it is now an army camp (or was) unlsess they’ve handed it back to the Germans. Hildesheim was the base of KG200 (remember the book?) which was not ficticious as you might think from reading the book. KG200 was a cover title to hide the fact that it was an evaluation unit for assessing the qualities of captured aircraft which included, among others, a slection of the following:-
Spitfire
Hurricane
Stirling
B17’s (quite a few, which they used to try and infiltrate the US bombing raids with limited success)
I’m not sure but I think they actually had P47 and P51 in the late stages of the conflict.
There you go, a bit of useless information. Don’t say I never do anything for you 😀
By: Eddie - 1st March 2005 at 12:07
I think the wing in the foreground is Bf110
Sign In
March 1, 2005 at 12:04 pm