Squadron Emblems?

[Specter]

I was avoiding studying for finals today and researched skins for JG51. I really couldn't find much but I did run into something interesting.

I was looking on feldgrau, which said that 3./JG51 is the 3rd Staffel in the 1st Gruppe (I/JG51).

So I set up a plane in PF/FB and it didn't look anything like we use for the official skin. The il2 skin has a blue shield with a stag sillhouette.

Ours has the JG51 Falcon head with a yellow skeleton hand near the cockpit. The only time this falcon head appears in Il2 is if you choose Stab/JG51 (Staff).

Does anyone know which one is correct or have any pictures/illustrations of real 3./JG51 planes?

[BigBear84]

3./JG51's emblem was the skeleton hand. The stag in the shield is the emblem for the entire first gruppe and the eagles head is the symbol for the entire jagdgeshwader. JG51 also had another symbol for the entire jagdgeshwader that contained a sword (I believe it looked like a foil) piercing the national markings of the allies. For a short time, the Jagdgeshwader also had a white M over a black field (this was sometime in 44 or 45, I can't remember; but it saw very limited use).

II/JG51 featured a crow with an umbrella and a pair of glasses that was painted behind the feuselage cross. III/JG51 was a devil sitting on a bomb and IV/JG51 was a boot. This was also the symbol of I/JG77. After JG77 was disbanded their first Gruppe was attached to JG51 as its fourth.

From memory this is the best I can do. I've been researching Luftwaffe fighter units for several years as a hobby. Wierd hobby, no?

[Specter]

Thanks Bigbear, very enlightening.

When were each emblems used on the planes? I would suspect that the skeleton hand was on 3./JG51's planes. Where the falcon head and blue shield also?

I found this in a quick search, displaying a lot of the emblems of the JGs.
www.clubhyper.com/reference/jgemblemswm_1.htm

[BigBear84]

Aircraft emblems are a very nebulous subject in the Luftwaffe. Their use depends heavily on the unit and its compliance with Luftwaffe regulations at the time. JG51 is an interesting unit in the sense that it has an honor title, "Molders." Other units with honor titles were JG26 "Shlageter" (Leo Shlageter was a nationalist hero from the Rhineland who fought with dissidents after WW1), and JG1 "Richtofen". Honor titles weren't given based on skill in combat like the designation of guard units in Russia, they were given to commemorate events or mark an occasion. (You could tell if a pilot was in an honor title unit by looking at the bottom of his sleeve; he would have a band of fabric with the name of the unit sewn to the bottom). Unit emblems tended to be far more important in these units than in any others.

During the Battle of Britain the eagle would have been found on the JG's Stab aircraft. Each individual saffeln had its own emblem (3./JG51 had the skeleton hand). From what I have been able to determine, most aircraft would have had the personal symbols of the pilot (very rare) and the emblem for the saffeln. The command flight of each Gruppe, carried the symbol of the Gruppe (I./JG51 the stag on the shield). I have seen staffeln aircraft carrying both the staffeln's emblem and that of the Gruppe but this seems to be fairly rare and only shows up on aircraft from the early stages of the BOB. The eagle's head seems to be limited almost exclusively to the stab flight during the BOB.

After the BOB, the Luftwaffe high command ordered that all unit emblems would be taken off Channel Coast fighters. The order was to stop the Brits from getting free intelligence. The Luftwaffe would shuttle its pilots all over France to where ever command felt it needed them most. French resistance fighters could watch the movement of the fighters and report to the British on unit strength and position. Aircraft that were being shot down over Britain could also easily be identified by their unit emblems.

This didn't affect JG51 because it soon ended up in Russia (Rather than fly their old equipment to Russia they picked up new gear on the way and painted to unit emblems on the aircraft as they did during the BOB). This remained steady throughout 42 and 43 but in 44 as conditions worsened the use of units emblems began to slack off.

More and more aircraft were being lost and replaced and little time was spent on adding unit emblems to the replacement fighters. In addition few enlisted pilots had their own aircraft anymore so unit emblems and personal symbols were no longer as important.

In 1944 an order was given to put the white M over the black field on all of the JG's aircraft. This was meant as a sort of memorial for Molders and as a way to "boost morale" (Goering really knew how to motivate people). the order was half-heartedly carried out and was rescinded two months later.

There are a couple crazy sort of twists to all this. First, in 1941 when Adolf Galland took command of JG26 he developed a system of rotating Staffeln from the entire JG into the Stab's airfield so that the Geshwader Kommandeur would have an opportunity to evaluate every flight in the unit and so that there would always be an adequate number of pilots to fight alongside the stab members (there were only four flying member of the stab at this time and in many cases not all four of them could actually fly). This system was eventually adopted by almost every JG and this may account for a lot of the funnyness with unit emblems.

Second, non-commissioned officers and staffeln leaders were constantly being shuffled around within the JG (transfers between Geshwaders usually only took place with officers and this was a very rare occurance). the pilots were often very loyal to their original unit and had their old unit embelms painted onto their new aircraft.

Finally, German fighter units were often gradually brought up to speed on new equipment. Because personel resources were so slim, JGs were often requiped one Gruppe at a time leaving the other two or three Gruppes (depending on the year) to fight. When a Gruppe traded up it gave its old aircraft that were still operational to the active Gruppes.
;D