Hello all,
can anyone post a photo of Balthasar's 'Green One' Emil of III/JG3 ? I have seen lots of colour profiles of this but I'm wondering what the evidence is for them as they sometimes vary. I have seen a photo of the tail with the kill bars but that's all.
Any help would be appreciated
As you can see no 'Green 1' markings were present whilst Balthasar was in charge of it. There are colour and other black and white photos though of the same aircraft whilst in use by it's new owner Walter Oesau. He was using it quite possibly as his spare sporting the Green markings whilst he was Kdr of III./JG3 in November 1940.
I do not have permission to post the full side view shots unfortunately but here is a well known shot of the aircraft whilst Oesau used it. You can see the top of the Green III Gruppe bar and still displaying Balthasar's victory tabs.
Edit: It's a crop of this well known Bundesarchiv photo of Walter Oesau and WNr.1559:
Claes Sundin has profiled this very aircraft in his forthcoming Profile book. Which more than likely gives a decent enough view of how the whole aircraft looked. Last I heard the book was at the printers. So won't be long... Balthasar used the aircraft for quite a long period of time. All the way back to when it was a Bf109E-3 (square canopy installed though) and had it's original early 1940 style RLM71/02 with a high RLM65 demarcation line. So it's appearance changed considerably over it's lifetime. Upgraded to a Bf109E-4 at some point. Just depends what period your choose to display? The aircraft from it's birth to when Oesau owned it has been chronicled as a series of highly detailed profiles for the Eagles over Europe project also and shows how the aircraft looked at different stages throughout it's service. It finally ended it's life as a Bf109E-7 and was lost whilst serving with Erg.JGr.Süd - 100% loss at Darmstadt 06 May 1942. What it looked like at that point is anyone's guess.
