Rybin, Y. Luftwaffe ace Walter Schuck researched / Christer Bergstrom, Yuriy Rybin. - Sweden : [s. l.], 2019. - 190 p. : ill.

WALTER SCHUCK Oerldfiuttg$urfumde Jm flamen des Obcrbcfehlshabers der Jtuftwaffc verlribeschdem Jriju ri* die frontflug Spiingc fiir Jager in Silbcr 0 y ff# s | W ,/iL 1 0 .7 . 194 г imdi ііаирітапп uni ШтуряЛтшапкаг Me 109 over Lake Urd, southwest o fMurmansk. The award document o f Schuck’s Pilot Clasp in Silver. The Germans returned in triumph. They chalked up no less than seven victories - the last one by Leutnant Bodo Helms - against no own losses. 19 GIAP returned to Murmashi with one Airacobra missing, but com­ pensated this by filing four victories, including one by Kutakhov. The neighbour unit, 20 GIAP; fared worse - three of its six Tomahawks were either destroyed or severely damaged. + The summer just fell upon them. The weather was mild, and a strong wind kept blowing. As the sun and the wind dried the reindeer moss, the mosquitoes and gnats dis­ appeared. In the bright sunlight, all colours appeared stronger in the sky and the landscape. The lakes and the bays got a very strong blue tone, and the leaves and the grass appeared intensely green. But the war took no pause. More missions against Murmansk followed. On 28 June, the tormented town was attacked twice. On the second occasion, Schuck helped to protect the Stukas by shooting down a Hurri­ cane. But again Schumacher superceded everyone else in the Staffel, this time by bagging three Soviet fighters. Added to the Hurricane he had shot down during the day’s first escort mission, Schumacher thus scored his second “quadruple victory”. This German superiority in air combat should not obscure the fact that the Soviets were fighting with a relentless stamina, and when Schuck afterward got a pause to think it over, he realised that the Soviet resist­ ance got sharper almost day by day. It was only sheer luck that saved JG 5 from suffering any personnel losses when nine of the modern Soviet Pe-2 bombers unexpectedly struck the airfield. On 1 July, the attack against Murmansk cost I./StG 5 a loss of three Ju 87s. A fourth was destroyed next day. One day in July, a damaged Ju 88 force-landed at Petsamo’s airfield. As the bomber crew was served their meal, they told the curious fighter pilots an amazing story of how they had wiped out an entire Allied fleet. This was the destruction of Lend Lease convoy PQ-17. German radio announced the destruction of one heavy cruiser and twenty-eight merchant ships with altogether 192,400 BRT. Even if that was an exaggeration, a very heavy blow indeed was dealt against the Allied supply shipping. With the sunken ships, 3,350 trucks and jeeps, 430 tanks, 210 aircraft and 99,316 tons of other materiel were lost. As a consequence, the British War Cabinet decided to postpone any further northern convoys to the USSR until later in the year, when the days were shorter. With this, the battle of PQ-17 deprived the Soviets of even more equipment than what was directly lost with the sunken ships. T