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Unhappy New Year by David Pentland. (B) B78 Eindhoven, Holland, 1st January 1945. Major Heinz Bar, Kommodore of Jagdgeswader 3, bounces a flight of 438 Squadron RCAF Typhoons attempting to take off from Eindhoven airfield. His attack was merely the start of a massed attack by the entire JG3, some 60 aircraft, which were only several minutes behind him. Despite losing some 15 pilots killed or captured, the attack destroyed 44 aircraft on the ground, and 9 in the air, including 2 Typhoons by Major Bar. An additional 60 were badly damaged. Item Code : DP0161B Unhappy New Year by David Pentland. (B) - This Edition TYPE EDITION DETAILS SIZE SIGNATURES OFFERS YOUR PRICE PURCHASING PRINT JG3 Pilots edition of 2 prints. Image size 12 inches x 8 inches (31cm x 20cm) Loos, Walter (clipped) Schuck, Walter (clipped) Thyben, Gerhard (clipped) Ebhardt, Rolf Radlauer, Heinz Muller, Siegfried (clipped) + Artist : David Pentland Signature(s) value alone : £325 £460.00 All prices on our website are displayed in British Pounds Sterling

Other editions of this item : Unhappy New Year by David Pentland. DP0161 TYPE EDITION DETAILS SIZE SIGNATURES OFFERS YOUR PRICE PURCHASING PRINT Limited edition of 30 giclee art prints. Image size 12 inches x 8 inches (31cm x 21cm) Radlauer, Heinz + Artist : David Pentland Signature(s) value alone : £45 £56.00 VIEW EDITION... ARTIST PROOF Limited edition of 20 artist proofs. Image size 12 inches x 8 inches (31cm x 21cm) Radlauer, Heinz + Artist : David Pentland Signature(s) value alone : £45 £5 Off! Now : £75.00 VIEW EDITION... ORIGINAL DRAWING Original pencil drawing by David Pentland. Paper size 17 inches x 12 inches (43cm x 31cm) Schuck, Walter Morewood, Roger + Artist : David Pentland Signature(s) value alone : £115 £100 Off! Now : £460.00 VIEW EDITION... General descriptions of types of editions :

Signatures on this item
*The value given for each signature has been calculated by us based on the historical significance and rarity of the signature. Values of many pilot signatures have risen in recent years and will likely continue to rise as they become more and more rare.
Name	Info
Feldwebel Heinz Radlauer *Signature Value : £45	Heinz Radlauer learnt to fly gliders in 1940, aged 17, and joined the Luftwaffe in August 1941. After Fighter School, in June 1944 he was posted to join JG51 Molders then fighting on the Eastern Front near Minsk, scoring his first victory in October of that year. Heinz Radlauer fleew the Bf109G, the Fw190A, and at the end of the war the Fw190D, by which time he had notched up over 100 combat missions, flying his last combat mission on 30th April 1945. Credited with 15 air victories, all on the Eastern Front, he was awarded the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd Class.
Leutnant Siegfried Muller (deceased) *Signature Value : £50 (clipped)	Born in 1924, Siegfried Muller first flew with JG1 Molders in the south of France. In 1943 he took part in the air battles over Salerno and Monte Cassino. He joined IV./JG3 Udet in June 1944, where he was promoted to Staffelkapitan of 16 Staffel /IV Sturm Gruppe flying heavily armoured Fw190s. With this Gruppe he took part in the Ardennes Offensive and on 1st January 1945, Operation Bodenplatte. At the end of the war he was attached to JG7 for training on the Me262 jet fighter. Awarded the Iron Cross 1 and 2, he scored 17 victories, including 9 four-engined bombers.
Oberleutnant Gerhard Thyben (deceased) *Signature Value : £40 (clipped)	Gerhard Thyben was born on 24th February 1922 in Kiel, Germany. Gerhard Thyben volunteered for military service in the Luftwaffe in late 1940 and by summer 1941 gained his pilots licence. Gerhard Gerd Thyben flew 385 combat missions and claimed 157 aerial victories. He claimed 152 victories on the Eastern Front, including 28 II-2 Sturmoviks and five victories on the Western Front. He flew 22 fighter-bomber missions on which he claimed two aircraft and seven trucks destroyed on the ground. On 8th May 1945 he claimed his last victory over the Baltic Sea. Thyben shot down a Petlyakov Pe2 that was almost certainly looking for German refugee ships escaping from the besieged Courland Pocket. Thyben caught the reconnaissance Pe2 at 07:54 and achieved what very well might have been the last Fw190 victory of World War II. The Pe2 crew, consisting of Starshiy Leytenantt Grigoriy Davidenko, Kapitan Aleksey Grachev, and Starshina Mikhail Murashko were all killed in the engagement. Thyben surrendered to the British on touching down. He was released in 1946 and later servied as an instructor with the Colombian Air Force. He died on 4th September 2006
Oberleutnant Rolf Ebhardt (deceased) *Signature Value : £45	Joined Luftwaffe in December 1941 and began flight training at Dresden in February 1942. Joined NJG 101 in December 1942 (night training unit) where he completed his specialist training. (In training flew Ju52, He111, Ju88, Do217 and Me109) As a newly promoted Leutnant he joined III/NJG 1 in Holland on 1st November 1943 and achieved his first night time victory on 26 April 1944. By the time of his eighth and last victory on 5 January 1945 he had flown 82 operations and been awarded the Iron Cross First and Second Class. All his ops were flown in Me110s. He died in March 2013.
Oberleutnant Walter Schuck (deceased) *Signature Value : £60 (clipped)	Initially with JG3, Walter Schuck was posted north to 7./JG5 in April 1942. On 15 June 1944 he chalked up his 100th victory during a day when he shot down 6 aircraft. Two days later he had his most successful day, achieving 12 victories in twenty-four hours, a feat never surpassed in JG5. On 1 August, he assumed command of 10./JG5. Walter Schuck transferred to fly the Me262 as Staffelkapitan of 3./JG7, and achieved 8 further victories flying the new jet. His final tally was 206 air victories. He was awarded the Knights Cross with Oak Leaves. Walter Schuck died on 27th March 2015.
Walter Loos *Signature Value : £55 (clipped)	Walter Loos was one of the last German Experten. He came as a newly trained pilot to the III./JG3 in January 1944, and was one of the few new pilots of 1944 who survived the war. He claimed his first aerial victory during a fierce aerial battle when the 8th US Air Force attacked Berlin on 6th March 1944. While with the Sturmgruppe IV./JG3, he downed several four-engine bombers and was hand picked by Walther Dahl for Geschwaderstab /JG300. Loos made a great success as a Sturmflieger, but was himself shot down nine times in only a few months. Sta/JG301 was equipped with the Ta152, the most modern propeller fighter, in order to protect the bases of the jet fighters from spring 1945. It was natural to include Loos in this unit. On 24th April 1945, Loos encountered a formation of Soviet fighters over Berlin and managed to down two of them. In spite of flying only 66 missions, he was credited with 38 confirmed victories, including 30 four-engine bombers, plus 8 unconfirmed victories. Six days later on 30th April, JG301 took off for their last battle of the war. Russian fighters attacked the formation and Loos shot down one Yak-9 – one of the last two victories claimed by JG301. That was his 38th victory. While 38 victories for WW2 German fighter pilots was not a huge number, when one considers that over 100 aces achieved over 100 victories, it is outstanding when one considers that Loos achieved his 38 victories in only 66 missions. Few pilots in history have achieved that ratio of kills to sorties.

The Aircraft :
Name	Info
Typhoon	Single engine fighter with a maximum speed of 412 mph at 19,000 feet and a ceiling of 35,200 feet. range 510 miles. The Typhoon was armed with twelve browning .303inch machine guns in the wings (MK1A) Four 20mm Hispano cannon in wings (MK!B) Two 1000ilb bombs or eight 3-inch rockets under wings. The first proto type flew in February 1940, but due to production problems the first production model flew in May 1941. with The Royal Air Force receiving their first aircraft in September 1941. Due to accidents due to engine problems (Sabre engine) The Hawker Typhoon started front line service in December 1941.The Hawker Typhoon started life in the role of interceptor around the cost of England but soon found its real role as a ground attack aircraft. especially with its 20mm cannon and rockets. This role was proved during the Normandy landings and the period after. The total number of Hawker typhoons built was 3,330.
Fw190	The Focke-Wulf 190 development project began in 1937. Conceived as a hedge against total dependence on the Messerchmitt 109, the 190 was designed by Kurt Tank utilizing a radial engine. This was against generally accepted design criteria in Germany, and many historians believe that the decision to produce a radial engine fighter was largely due to the limited manufacturing capacity for in-line, water-cooled engines which were widely used on all other Luftwaffe aircraft. Despite these concerns, Tanks design was brilliant, and the 190 would become one of the top fighter aircraft of WWII. The first prototype flew in mid-1939. The aircraft had excellent flying characteristics, a wonderful rate of acceleration, and was heavily armed. By late 1940 the new fighter was ordered into production. Nicknamed the butcher bird, by Luftwaffe pilots, early 190s were quite successful in the bomber interceptor role, but at this stage of the war many Allied bombing raids lacked fighter escort. As the war dragged on, Allied bombers were increasingly accompanied by fighters, including the very effective P-51 Mustang. The Allies learned from experience that the 190s performance fell off sharply at altitudes above 20,000 feet. As a result, most Allied bombing missions were shifted to higher altitudes when fighter opposition was likely. Kurt Tank had recognized this shortcoming and began working on a high-altitude version of the 190 utilizing an in-line, water-cooled engine. Utilizing a Jumo 12-cylinder engine rated at 1770-HP, and capable of 2,240-HP for short bursts with its methanol injection system, the 190D, or Long Nose or Dora as it was called, had a top speed of 426-MPH at 22,000 feet. Armament was improved with two fuselage and two wing mounted 20mm cannon. To accommodate the changes in power plants the Dora had a longer, more streamlined fuselage, with 24 inches added to the nose, and an additional 19 inches added aft of the cockpit to compensate for the altered center of gravity. By mid 1944 the Dora began to reach fighter squadrons in quantity. Although the aircraft had all the right attributes to serve admirably in the high altitude interceptor role, it was not generally focused on such missions. Instead many 190Ds were assigned to protect airfields where Me-262 jet fighters were based. This was due to the latter aircrafts extreme vulnerability to Allied attack during takeoff and landing. The 190Ds also played a major role in Operation Bodenplatte, the New Years Day raid in 1945 which destroyed approximately 500 Allied aircraft on the ground. The High Command was impressed with the 190Ds record on this raid, and ordered most future production of the Doras to be equipped as fighter-bombers. In retrospect this was a strategic error, and this capable aircraft was not fully utilized in the role for which it was intended.

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