Walther Dahl claimed his first victory on the opening day of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union. He continued to score against the Soviets, his total reaching 51 victories by July 1943, when he was assigned to the West as Gruppenkommandeur of III./JG 3. He successfully made the transition from East to West, although he was shot down by RAF Spitfires on 17AUG43 had had to make a belly landing in his Bf 109. The Luftwaffe became more and more desperate to stem the flow of Allied bombers, and Dahl took command of JG 300 in June, 1944. JG 300 was formed as a special unit whose pilots were to close in on American bomber formations to point-blank range, ramming their targets if necessary. While these tactics were sometimes successful, they were also costly to the Luftwaffe, especially if Allied escort fighters were present. Dahl was one of several prominent Jagdflieger who locked horns with Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, being relieved of command on 30NOV44 for refusing Göring’s order to intercept an American raid in poor weather, only the intervention of Adolf Galland preventing his court martial. Dahl was quickly reinstated and promoted, and continued to fly combat missions until the end of the war. He was credited with his last victory, a P-51 Mustang on 26APR45, bringing his total to 128.
The model depicts Dahl’s Fw 190A-8 of Stab /JG 300, at Jüterbog, Germany, December 1944.








Your blog as so much reference.
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Thanks Pierre, hopefully a nibble each morning!
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Again, great build and great background to the build which I enjoy very much. Funny, the Hasegawa FW-190 took some flak for years, the Eduard kit came along ans was supposedly a savior, but turns out the Hasegawa still builds into a great, and maybe better, rendition of the a/c.
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The Hasegawa kit is not as detailed as the Eduard, but the shapes are right and it is certainly easier to build.
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.. Dahl won the Oak Leaves for his 100th in around March 1945. Nobody knows where the last 28 came from outside of his imagination-he certainly wasn’t flying with a front line fighter unit!
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Dahl was to have been presented with the Oak Leaves when he got into his spat with Göring on 30NOV44, but that got delayed. I use the victory tallies in Toliver & Constable for consistency, but I have seen other figures for Dahl. He was flying the Me 262 at the end of the war, his tally includes 7 on that type.
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Hi Jeff,
..great rendition of Dahl’s A-8. My ‘colleague’ is right re his ‘tally’. There’s a very good reason why Dahl’s memoir has never been translated into English – it is so risible. Lorant’s two-volume history of JG 300 doesn’t include a single quote from it.
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Hi Neil!
Thanks, and I am generally suspicious of all these type of tallies, but I am in no position to sort them out in a meaningful manner. An arbitrary reduction of 50% would be closer to the loss reports from each side. In the end I have just used what is in Toliver & Constable for consistency, but I am not going to die on that hill!
Happy New Year to you and yours!
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