The Battlefield Detective
The Battlefield Detective is a nickname I received from several of my friends in the past.
It is related with the identification of an WW I unknown British airman on the Bovekerke Churchyard, now known as Sgt Roebuck and the identification of the two unknown officers on the Zeebrugge Churchyard as Wing Commander Brock and Lt Commander Harrison VC who were killed in the Zeebrugge Raid in 1918.
Next to this I've been able to find the locations where individual soldiers were killed during the Great War for their families.
But the detective work goes much wider, finding back the forgotten aerodromes of the war, even those who never existed according to local inhabitants, such as the one at Saint-Erme to give an example. Or reconstructing the history of the early German fighter units, the KEK's and Fokkerstaffels.
I also was able to locate the crash site of the German ace Werner Voss and British ace Arthur Rhys Davids.
And finally to locate in which area the father of air fighting tactics, Oswald Boelcke had his fatal crash in 1916.
KEK's and Fokkerstaffels
This is the first time that the history of the German Kampfeinsitzer Kommandos, better known as KEKs and the Fokkerstaffels, have been gathered in a book. The KEKs were the predecessors of the famous Jagdstaffeln or Jastas which would wreck havoc on Allied aircraft over the trenches during the First World War. Aces such as Boelcke, Immelmann, Berthold, Buddecke, Göring, Udet, Frankl, Bernert, Veltjens, Student, von Althaus and Leffers were household names in Germany yet feared and revered by their Allied contemporaries. The KEKs are surrounded with mystery and even today, most of the locations of the airfields have long been forgotten. Remarkably, all airfields were located by the author and mapped in the History of the German KEK and Fokkerstaffels: The Early German Fighter Units in 1915-16. This book not only presents the history of these units and their aces, it also acts as a battlefield guide so the reader can explore these fascinating locations today. Illustrated with over 250 photographs and profiles of the various fighter aircraft they used in battle, this fascinating book takes a journey from Flanders to the Somme, to the Verdun to the Vosges
An exciting and important book on the early years of the German Air Service
Amazon
The authors' meticulous research and penchant for detail is evident throughout the book. The detail does not overpower the storyline, however, but provides a platform from which the authors' narrative flows.
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