Right, here's my take on that combat report. This is going to be a long post, so bear with me.
I believe it is a fake.
1. This combat report is loose. In the combat report files in the Public Record Office (now National Archive) when I viewed them, they were ALL attached to the files by a treasury tag. There is no eveidence of this ever being attached to a file.
2. The combat report identifies F/Lt. Rook. It is VERY unusual for a pilot of one squadron to identify in his combat report the name of a pilot of another squadron. In all of those that I have seen where another friendly fighter joined the combat, the best that is usually shown is the fuselage code (and a lot of the time, because of the speed of combat, the fuselage code given is not fully correct).
3. I have NEVER seen the name of the Luftwaffe unit(s) attacked on a combat report. Here it shows Erprobungsgruppe 210 and Zerstörergeschwader 26. Also, it shows the target: Parnell (sic - should be Parnall) Factory, Yate Bristol. Occasionally, a pilot will identify the Luftwaffe target, since he will have seen the bombing attack being carried out as he went in to attack. In this instance, the combat took place nowhere near Yate, Bristol, yet the combat report identifies an individual factory as the target (which was not actually hit because 504 Squadron intercepted the bombing force before it reached the target). This points, to me, a fake done in some decade after the Battle of Britain.
4. Now, here's the clincher. I obtained a photocopy of Constable-Maxwell's combat report when I was carrying out my research into Erprobungsgruppe 210 for my book on that unit. Here are the two relevant pages that I wrote about the combat involving Anthony Rook and Michael Constable-Maxwell
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In what I consider to be the fake combat report, there is no mention of Constable-Maxwell returning to base because of oxygen failure. Constable-Maxwell then took off alone and came across F/Lt. Rook attacking a Bf 110, and joined in. I have quoted from Constable-Maxwell's combat report directly in my book: '...saw E/A (with one engine stopped) crash after endeavouring to force-land. No cine gun. Return fire from rear gun. None of the crew baled out...' That is verbatim from Constable-Maxwell's combat report I saw in the Public Record Office in the 1980s and obtained a photocopy of it. The fake combat report does not mention anything I have just quoted. And that combat report states that Rook 'chased the 110 out to sea'. No he didn't - the combat and crash of Bf 110, S9+DK, was well inland. And Constable-Maxwell did not withdraw through lack of ammunition. You can see in my account, quoting Alexander McKee (an excellent researcher and writer who interviewed Constable-Maxwell), that Constable-Maxwell watched for several minutes while Fritz Ebner sought a safe landing place to get his crippled Bf 110 down.
Unfortunately, fakes have been in circulation for many years...
Fake, fake, fake!
