Customer Reviews

Jagdgeschwader 2 : 'Richthofen' (Osprey Aviation Elite 1)

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A few minutes ago, I finished reading this book and given its scope, found it to be a first-class treatment of Jagdgeschwader 2 'Richthofen'.

Contrary to what the previous reviewer said about the author, I have read several of John Weal's other aviation books from Osprey and in each of them, Mr. Weal has shown that he has a comprehensive grasp of the Luftwaffe organizational networks and operations. For instance, in the earlier part of this book, Mr. Weal offered a fascinating summary of the development of the prewar Luftwaffe fighter command structure, which was first based upon various geographical zones within Germany itself. Later, on the eve of war, this structure was simplified and based on a small number of designated Luftflotten or "air fleets" -- not much different from the "groups" that the Royal Air Force had created for the defense of Britain.

Mr. Weal also profiled some of JG 2's most distinguished fighter pilots. Men like Helmut Wick, Walter Oesau (the 3rd fighter pilot in history to score 100 victories in aerial combat during 1941), Egon Mayer (who pioneered the head-on technique for tackling USAAF bomber formations over Europe and later became the first Luftwaffe fighter pilot on the Channel Front to score 100 victories), Kurt Bühligen, and Erich Rudorffer (who became a specialist in scoring multiple victories -- at 91, he is today the world's oldest and highest scoring ace, having achieved 222 victories in the war).

This book is ideal for anyone who is looking for an overview of one of the Luftwaffe's top fighter units of the Second World War.

The author had only one sentence about JG-2 figher ace Siegfried Lemke being successful in Italy 1944 when I/JG-2 was assigned to that theater of operations. The author never gave any stories of Lemke's scoring 16 aerial victories before his unit was returned to France. The author is suppose to be an expert on the Luftwafee; however, in this book and several other books, he has fail miserably in detailing the aces and their victories. He just seems to concentrate on the big picture of the Germans losing the war. I am surprise that the Osprey company keep publishng his books.

This is a good book, but written in very dry reading ( typical of this series ). Of course the purpose of the book is to give a very general description of JG2. But it would have been much better if Weal could write a book in the same style as Don Caldwell's "JG 26 TOP GUNS OF THE LUFTWAFFE"...