Jasta 7 without Jacobs

[Gregvan]

Hi All,

Rick's info on the Jasta 43 losses probably comes from Josef Rasech's diary, which was translated and excerpted in Vol. 8 No. 4 of the old US Cross & Cockade - it's one of the very best articles of this kind. Bill Puglisi did a great job, with help from Rasech and Max Holtzem (in the translation).

The diary entry for 24 July notes: They tangled withfour 'Englishmen' who were "some older birds, dashing and full of spirit to attack."

"Upon landing I heard Lt Jakobs was injured in the air battle with a foot wound, but without having touched the bone. Lt Schmidt had to make a forced landing at Romecke (Fourth Army) where Jasta 56 is posted; his radiator had been shot to pieces. There was no report about Wiehle. My machine had eleven hits. Our air fight had started at Bailleul and not until near Ypres were some of us able to get out of it. There was a strong wind coming from the southwest. At 6:00 pm, word came from Wiehle - at last. He was all right. A control wire for the elevator had been severed by a bullet. Thank God, for we are all sound. He had to land near Armentieres.....(later that day) Schobinger and I visited Jakobs in the field hospital. He is doing fairly well.

So you see, Gunnar, Schmidt, Wiehle and Raesch all had damage to their machines, though not very heavy damage.

Interestingly, at least some of the Jasta 43 Fokkers (Jaokobs' and Gutknecht's ) had basically black fuselages with white tail units, but others had different colored fuselages. They all had white tails. So maybe Jasta 7 was in this scrap, and maybe not. Raesch makes no mention of any other units involved, and he is usually pretty complete about these things.

Greg

[Gregvan]

Since I know someone will ask for it, here's most of Raesch's description of the 24 July scrap: "The sky was full of clouds, and shortly after we took off, we could see heavy German AA fire. We were in two echelons with three machines each. For many reasons, this seemed more advantageous, but it is most necessary to stay within good contact to be able to protect each other. Wiehle was in my echelon as was Jakobs. Keller, Schmidt, and Rueggeberg formed the other echelon. Four English single-seaters were flying to the right of us on the other side, along the front line. A little farther away, after we had gained a little more altitude and when we thought the right moment had come, we attacked, but the Englishmen were at our same height - we had misjudged ! Wiehle fought one Englishman who was picking on me and he got the worst of it. I then attacked this same Englishman. Helping each other comes in handy ! I could see Schmidt under the attack of an opponent and in great danger. Immediately, I turned toward him and started firing. At the same moment, phosphor trails whizzed by my ears. Looking back, I could see two Englishmen attacking me. I jerked my ship around and the three of us flew in a hazardous carousel. One Englishman was able to shoot at me and I spun in and fell into a cloud, fortunately; but when I was barely out of it, there were my two Englishmen. I put a few rounds into both of them at the same time. Suddenly, Wiehle appeared and they turned away. Above us there was a big scramble still going on and we began to climb to try to get into the fight. One Englishman attacked me and a second one jumped Wiehle.Well, it looked today like we had run into some older birds, dashing and full of spirit to attack. We curved like crazy, making it difficult to get one in our gunsights; but when we did, they didn't seem a bit worried and stayed up high. My opponent had pushed me downward and deeper into the lines where I found myself alone and only 400 meters above the ground. To my surprise, the Englishman left me and flew westward. This was my good firtune as he had me all the time. Very probably he was out of ammunition as it so often happened with me. I looked around and found that I was near Mt. Kemmel, so I turned eastward in a hurry".

He goes on to describe the losses which have already been mentioned.

By the way, Rueggeberg flew a largely-black Fokker as well.

Greg Van Wyngarden

[Rick]

Since Greg mentioned the possibility of Jasta 7 also being involved in the 24Jul18 combat, I checked Jasta 7 losses this date and came up with one: Uffz. Ruess, WIA,sv. near Menin in a Fokker D.VII. R.