'Bazu' Cantacuzino new information, New info from "Avions" article

Dear all,

first of all this is my first message and I thank you for adding me in the forum.

I would like to share with you the new information that came to the light in the recent article about Cantacuzino on French magazine "Avions" 209-210 January/April 2016.
According to the author of this article (Dénes Bernard), Cantacuzino claimed 45 confirmed victories (1 shared), two more compared to the previous victory lists published elsewhere, making him the top Romanian aces also counting the number of confirmed kills only (Serbanescu is credit with 44).
As far as I know the "new" victories are:
1- 23/7/44 1 Yak-9
2- 21/8/44 3 Yak (instead 2).

Moreover in the article is also quoted for the first time the serial number of Cantacuzino’s Bf109G-2 “A”, W.Nr.10350.

It appears that the whole article is based on very deep researches; please any comment will be welcome.

Thanks

Flavio

Flavio, thanks for your kind words related to my article.
All three "new" victories of "Bâzu" listed by you are mentioned in archival documents, more precisely by the Combat diary of Gr. 9 vân.

Gen. Dénes

It is interesting how much they are actually added three new victory, and how not?

In the case of Polish victories in IX 1939. Some authors have overt tendency to extend / expand the list of successes (eg. Jerzy Pawlak). Other authors may tend to the sharp reduction of the list of real victories (eg. Marius Emmerling or less Jerzy B. Cynk).

reagrds
mw

Thank you very much Dénes for the reply,

I suppose also the W.Nr.10350 comes from that source, isn't it?

Flavio

No, it comes from another archival source, not the unit combat diary.

Gen. Dénes

In the book "Le Grand Cirque" by Pierre Henri Clostermann, one of the interesting remarks of the author, somewhere in the book, was that each fighter of the Royal Air Force had a camera installed on it, and a "kill" was officially recorded only if it was caught on camera.
Meanwhile the planes of the U.S.A.A.F. (United States Army Air Forces, as it was named during WWII) did not have such recording cameras on each of them.
So, according to the French author that fought most of the war in R.A.F., when few American planes (bombers or fighters) were opening fire on the same Luftwaffe plane, if that German plane went down, each American plane claimed it after returning to the base.
These inflated numbers of German "killed" planes pushed some American commanders to declare to newspapers that Luftwaffe is wiped out and practically terminated, as early as the end of 1943.
That was to the big annoyance of the pilots who continued risking their lives in the air, while facing a still powerful Luftwaffe.
If any of these sound strange to you, the remarks belong to Pierre Henri Clostermann.

Gun cameras were seldom taken as the only "proof." A gun camera ran for the duration when the trigger was pressed and a few seconds after. So, the only thing a gun camera could show was whether the rounds hit the target and that is all. It did not record what happened afterwards. It was quite possible for a "hit" plane to limp all the way home. The only time when gun camera footage was used as proof was when the target exploded as soon as it was hit, and that happened a lot less often that Hollywood would have us believe.

Radu

Also, if the pilot of the single-seat enemy aircraft bailed out.

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on September 15, 2016 07:10 pm

Furthermore, aerial victories came with a number of extra "qualifiers" such as "confirmed", "probable" and "shared". When a number of sources could confirm that the plane was clearly hit and then brought down, that was a "confirmed". When a plane was clearly hit but there was doubt about what happened afterwards, that was a "probable". When a number of pilots claimed that they brought down the same plane as mentioned above, that was usually called a "shared victory". There are examples in the Romanian records of "doborat cu patrula" (brought down by the entire flight).
In any case, pilots who boasted and lied about their "success" were often "calmed down" by his comrades. They could probably get away with it once and maybe twice.
Radu

Very interesting in this regard is clearly separates between: the declaration of victory (claim/s); the official recognition by the headquarters (HQ) - confirmation of this claim/s, and in fact destroyed or damaged plane - the true output.

What is recognized and actually granted a formal administrative confirmation of victory, this is official pilot's success.


On the other hand what really crashed on land (destruction of aircraft, in LW > 60 % damage) are a long-term research of many historians and aviation enthusiasts.

Some of them in the past had made a overclaiming of list victories achived by pilots.


This is a rather complex problem of the creation of many myths to the needs of the public, to the joy and satisfaction of many, regardless of the facts/true.

mw