..looking forward to your review Rowan ! if interested, there is an interview with the author here http://members.aol.com/kaczmarek190/JG300.html there are some nice photos from the book courtesy of the author here http://members.aol.com/kaczmarek190/JG300film.html

Hi Neil and Rowan Looking forwward to vol.2!! The only thing I bemoan about the books is, that they were not published 10 or 15 years earlier .. many of the veterans died before they could see it and some were not very happy that Jean-Yves had their material for years without result ... this is no critique on the work!! ... research takes time .. I just wished they could have seen what a nice book became of their contribution Besides this some were driven to a certain person (that J-Y. named) who maybe has good intensions but is a "special" character .... (even stranger than me .. I would say) ... furthermore some material was wasted in two expensive heaps of paper I have to save some money to buy it as i just had my b-Day and X-mas is a looong way to go best wishes Steffen

..I've known the two authors for a number of years now ..so thats not quite the way I see it... yes, the research effort by Lorant was on-going for a very long time - in fact it never really stopped. Only a matter of weeks before everything went to the publisher in 2005 the authors finally hunted down the the family of a previously unknown veteran of II.(Sturm) /JG 300, Uffz. Heinz Aengenvoort ,who had served with 7./JG 300 since September 1944 and who had been shot down and killed on 9 April 1945 - the pictures from this family's album are one of the highlights of the book ....yes the authors could have published sooner perhaps but then the books would be missing large parts of the story - btw many veterans have copies of the very nice French edition which appeared two years ago.. As you know the two books published a few years ago by Henning and Bethke are worthless. The problem with Burkhard Otto (JG300.de) is not quite as it seems ..when Lorant searched out the veterans and finally located them he would borrow their albums, make copies, return the albums and then as a thank you to them he would make them copies of the other veterans pictures for them and was thus able to put former comrades back in touch with each other, as he explains in the interview (link above). He also explains how difficult of course it was to find individual pilots to tell the story ..BO would then come along, months, years later - not obviously with every veteran as there are many he has yet to discover - and take these pictures that had been located & copied by Lorant and given back to the veterans as a thank you. These pictures would then appear on BO's web site JG300.de - with a copyright mark on them. Nothing wrong with that perhaps - unless you happen to have done all the detective work yourself. So you can see why, when Lorant realised what was going on, he stopped circulating material and kept all his contacts and pictures back for his own work, apart from those that have appeared elsewhere, eg Prien, Barbas etc - this is why BO has no material on his site on the late war Gruppen, III./JG 300 or IV./JG 300, and why he is unable to correctly identify many pictures & personalities on his site - he didn't discover those pictures or meet the veterans or the families who they belonged too in many cases - did you see the picture of 'Red 5' (taken in March 1945) with the personal emblem 'Timoschenko' under the cockpit that appeared on a recent JG300.de update - fantastic, rare photo from JG300's time on the Eastern Front in 1945, yet BO couldn't identify the pilot, didn't know anything about the picture! ...in fact we think it is quite amusing that there is a JG 300 pilot flying sorties in 1945 who lives only 500 metres from BO's front door in Berlin who he still doesn't know.. hope this explanation helps with understanding a bit of the background to the history of the history ! all the best Neil

Hi Neil Many thanks for the additional comments! obviously I was not as clear as I wanted to be. I have not and did not want to make any negative comment towards Mr. Lorant .. there was a time, many moons ago, when I had some kind of aversion against this looooong term projects, but the more I learn about the process the more I admire the researchers and their labour of love. All I wanted to express is, that I am sorry for all the Wilde Sau crews (be it pilots or ground personnel) that could not see what a nice work Jean-Yves Lorant book is. I have spoken to some members at one meeting in Gatow who were making comments towards the long time the work took and this was my only source for the statement I made in the other post. The longer I know BO the stranger he seems to be. I have no axe to grind with him as I am just a customer in his shop .. it is just the way how he treats me. I will not further comment on this (you or J-Y. have surely had worse experiences with him). back to the book I still do not really like the writing style (I only speak of vol.1). Maybe it is just a thing of translating French to English to German and of my limited language knowledge. Still I like the whole thing because it is a great work. hope I made my point clearer without opening new "battlefields" .. I seem to have a hand for this lately best wishes Steffen

Hi Steffen, ...your comments are all perfectly valid..I have no problem at all with that ...after all, you are a friend..! I think I know what you mean about the writing style - most of it was translated from French of course and M. Lorant has a very literary style. Many of the more vivid personal accounts were translated from French having been translated from German, but they were then checked against the original German - which meant quite a few corrections, changes of emphasis etc.. so it is German-->French-->English -->German-->English.. personally I think Vol II is much better !

Hi again What can I say?! Eagle Editions very kindly sent us a copy of this book. It hardly seems fair to do it the injustice of a cursory glance, but I will anyway! - It's awesome! The most detailed personal Luftwaffe accounts of air combat in the 1944-45 period I've ever read, backed up by hundreds of previously unpublished photos... I'm getting set more many evenings' reading! Look out for our proper Review - but I won't rush into it. All the best Rowan