Juha,
A long but interesting read. The guy did his homework, complete with maps and plausible explanations. I've been through enough "fights" and done without the help of our tapes, ACMI or GCI to re-create what happened for the debrief. I totally understand the frustration of trying to recreate things, but then add spotty records, egos, legend, on top of decades of elasped time and it's a hell of a spaghetti mess. I think he did some real detective work along with sound reasoning.
I've seen four guys in a "wall" of fighters, all with in visual range, and all come back with a "variant" of what happened. It's then up to the flight lead to pen it up, and figure out what really happened. Tapes with both audio and video help, but sometimes they don't work, or are washed out by the sun at some critical point. Doing the sleuth work so long after must have been seriously tedious (and fun if you got to speak with the actual players).
The particular discussion about Sattler's late take off, and Tempest pilot reporting a lone fighter doing turns then breaking back in, seem to be in my opinon, a single guy looking for his flight and doing 180's trying to get visual. Remember what the eye see's best is movement, and depending on the time of day, he would probably adjust his altitude to enhance his chances of getting visual. In my timeframe it would be larger aircraft turning, flares, and in low light conditions afterburner (all like blood in the water to attract the sharks). It would seem that he was shot down regardless of what the several different versions of the story were as told by Rieche (attributable to allied records from that day and via Rieche - he was at the crash site of the Fw / Ta-152).
Also of note amoung the stories, guns worked for one burst, one plus some burst, or no bursts, with him pointing out he saw impact marks on the downed plane. It's as if he had something to prove when he had witnesses with him (really wouldn't need to point that out). What he doesn't say is there were no shot marks on Sattlers plane (again, if he said it was shot down earlier, and it actually was, no one would say boo as it was corraberated via his story). However his not pointing it out seems to me to be noteworthy / admission it was shot down (he didn't defend the reputation of the Ta-152 because he couldn't).
Do I know if he was fabricating his story, or it was mis-quoted or mis-printed? Nope. Do I know that time distorts memories. Yep. What I do know from having delt with folks who tend to exagerate, is that they have a hard time remembering their stories (they remember what happened but not how they portrayed it), and therefor have inconsistencies in later regurgitations.
Food for thought only.
Cheers,
Biff
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.lee.
