USAAF raids over Finland?

[Topspeed]

Well..if it is possible that Soviets had P-38:s then it may have happened.

There were as many as 60 Airacobras fleets in the air at a time. Lieutenant Pallasvesa engaged alone one of these fleets..shooting down four of them...until the lead plane got him.

That battle was a long one and the lead AC pilot ordered the flight into a spanish ring ( sort of ) and while Pallasvesa was chasing the end of the snake the venomous teeth got him..right into cockpit from above. Recorded by landstations and infantry.

Very costly tactics by the soviets but effective against solo Me 109, which had no rearward visibility.

But let's get back to topic..no US air raids over Finland.

There is no way an FW 189 was mistaken by the finns because we had also FW 189s operating from Finland.

[Mikko H.]

There is no way an FW 189 was mistaken by the finns because we had also FW 189s operating from Finland.

Well, there's one well documented case of a German He 111 being shot down by a Finnish fighter, and numerous He 111 bombers were stationed in Finland during the war. There's at least one other case where a Finnish pilot shot down a German Ju 188 over the Gulf of Finland. Both these cases have in common that Germans hadn't informed Finns of these flights beforehand. Consequently, IMHO, the likeliest explanation for Juutilainen's 'Lightning' is that this was a German Fw-189 on a recon mission of which Finns weren't informed.

[Topspeed]

Flying in formation with another Lightning and 2 PE-2s + 14 I-153s ? Highly unlikely.

Also there can be no mistake about Yak-9 and a P-51..wingshape is evidently different.

Why do you even want to question these highly trained professionals combat reports. Do you make a mistake between a fork and a knife ?

If the guys saw a P-51 for the first time..they knew it was not any of the planes they'd seen before..that is a fact. Otherwise they's say it was a Yak-9, obviously.

Of course if there is a scramble and an radar info comes of an incoming bogie and there is a bad weather..and then a He-111 is of the course wondering around..a rookie is put to sweep it down...a mistake can happen.
I have no recollection of this He-111 incident..where did this happen and who was the pilot ? I believe that Ju-188 is possible..unknown aircraft type unauthorized in Finnish airspace.

Certainly the Germans had said that now a Fw 189 did not return and the other Fw 189 pilot informed the incident, if this was the case..there is no such a report.

[Mikko H.]

Please check the discussion forum I mentioned earlier. Esp. on the pages 2 and 3 there are threads on this very subject, and the people there are serious researchers. The Soviets used no Spitfires, Mustangs or Lightnings afainst Finns.

Yak-9 was the plane usually mistaken for a Spitfire. What were the Soviet planes mistaken for Mustang is a trickier question. When fighting for their lives men don't pay too much attention to the specifics of the enemy plane, they try to destroy the enemy while staying alive. In such situations men have no time for details. There's no comparing for you trying to tell a fork from a knife in breakfast table -- if you're at least moderately qualified to use a fork, your life is not in danger. Besides, it was the squadron intelligence officer who usually assigned ID's to enemy planes the pilots claimed to have shot down, based on how the pilots described the plane.

Once again, check the FAF discussion forum. There's lots of interesting information on this subject.

[Topspeed]

Please Mikko,

Ok now I found it..through this site:

http://directory.tiscali.it/Recreation/ ... rld_War_II

Yep so finns scored no mustangs, spits, lightnings and..but Nissinen scored a Ju-188 and Karu an He-111....very interesting indeed ( and sad in a way ).

Pretty cool that these researchers waited 60 years before they published all these facts. Now I know which books to read and which not.

Thank you.

JT

[Topspeed]

Russians got 10 mustangs mkI from RAF.In tv-dokument about Juutilainen,he said when German pilots of Kuhlmay group came they asked what types of planes Russians flew.When Juutilainen mentioned mustangs,germans got shivers.Maybe they had bad experiments of mustatangs from western front

Well I saw Kuhlmey document and he said Soviet planes were no threat to their fighters, but Stukas were slightly vulnerable.

He also said that for Finland the battle was " Sei oder nicht sei "=> to be or not to be. He was certain that Finland was wiped of if that attack was not stopped at all costs.

[Juha Tompuri]

Of course if there is a scramble and an radar info comes of an incoming bogie and there is a bad weather..and then a He-111 is of the course wondering around..a rookie is put to sweep it down...a mistake can happen.
I have no recollection of this He-111 incident..where did this happen and who was the pilot ?

Everybody can make mistakes.
Even the best.
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... ht=#258497

Regards, Juha

[Zygmunt]

That battle was a long one and the lead AC pilot ordered the flight into a spanish ring ( sort of ) and while Pallasvesa was chasing the end of the snake the venomous teeth got him..right into cockpit from above. Recorded by landstations and infantry.

Spanish ring... is that like a Lufbery circle? I typed "Spanish ring" into google and most of the results seemed to be marital aids... (you gotta love the internet :roll: ).

Also there can be no mistake about Yak-9 and a P-51..wingshape is evidently different.

Why do you even want to question these highly trained professionals combat reports. Do you make a mistake between a fork and a knife ?

Mistakes certainly did happen - especially when an aircraft was newly in service. British (and RAF Polish) pilots would sometimes report Me-110s and Ju-88s as Do-17s, because the Do-17 was better known. Did the possible mix-up between Yak-9 and P-51 take place at a time when the Yak was still new?

NB, Musashi posted this thread with an interview with a Polish ace - he seems to have made the Me-110/Do-17 mistake in September 1939:
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=47587

Cheers
Zygmunt

[Topspeed]

Z,

That is right a Spanish Circle..invented and used in the spanish civil war..very much used by the Soviets..Hans Wind once met a flight of I-16s with a Brewster..all the soviets did was they flew in the s....d circle and double knight Wind shot all of them down.

Yeah they say that Yak-7 had a teardrop canopy and thence the mistake..I only hope those ACES were still around..I bet they'd spit green stuff from they guts after reading those stories.

JT

[Zygmunt]

In Captain Wind's lectures on fighter tactics I read the term "spanish fly" for Lufbery circle, but then perhaps it all depends on who translates it. I read this version:

http://www.virtualpilots.fi/en/hist/WW2 ... cture.html

I think the link was first put up by Juha in a thread which soon came to be about Brewster Buffaloes:

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... sc&start=0

If "Spanish ring"/"Spanish fly" does mean "Lufbery circle" then it wasn't invented in the Spanish civil war - Lufbery was an aviator in the First World War, and it was certainly around then:

http://www.acepilots.com/wwi/us_lufbery.html

Zygmunt

[Topspeed]

Ok Z,

I stand corrected.

JT

[Csaba Becze]

After many years researching, I found many examples of misindeticifation from all sides.

Actually, the Lightning is the most intresting to me - once a Hungarian Ju 88 crew also reported a twin fuselage fighter as attacker (they didn't say, that it was aLightning)
I didn't find any proofs of the exact type.

[Esa K]

An old thread, but maybe it needs some revitalization...

Is there some "news" about "Illus Lightning", or is the consensus now among those who have studied the case in detail, that it was a German Fw-189 Juutilainen shoot down by accident?


Best regards

Esa K

[Grendel-B]

The P-38 was a Focker-Wulf 189. That was known immediately after the sortie among the pilots.

The P-51s were most likely new Soviet types, though the VVS did indeed have P-51s.

[Esa K]

Thanks Grendel-B for the input.

The P-38 was a Focker-Wulf 189. That was known immediately after the sortie among the pilots.

Is there any written/published statements about this, or is it something that just is hinted here and there in interviews etc etc with the veteran pilots? And the fact that it was a Focke Wulf 189, is it a assumption, or is there some indicies about it in German or Soviet/Russian archival material? Or maybe in Finnish radio intelligence material from the day in question? And, if it was a Focke Wulf 189, was it a Luftwaffe one, or, a plane captured by the Soviet Air Force? (And, have sometimes "played with the idea" that could there be the hypothetical possibility that it was a USAAF P-38 that had navigated a bit wrong. Had the P-38 enough range to reach the Gulf of Finland from UK? Well the USAAF "hypothesis" is just as a game for the mind ).

best regards

Esa K