This is a photo of a Dornier 200. Luftwaffe code for captured B-17s.
I believe most of the captured B-17s were used by KG 200 in various nefarious operations. Besides being used to drop agents into enemy territory, they were used to familiarize and train Luftwaffe fighter pilots in the best ways to shoot them down and to track US bomber formations, radioing information on heading, speed and altitude.
The Luftwaffe was’nt alone in doing this - The RAF had several HE 115s which had been operated by the Dutch and Norwegian Air Forces which defected to England when their countries fell to the Germans. The Brits operated them out of the Home Islands and Malta, largely used for recon and dropping agents into Occupied Territory, until losses and a lack of spares grounded the aircraft. And I read somewhere about an Italian pilot who uses a captured P-38 to shoot down a couple of US bombers before he himself was shot down.
Years and years ago, when I was a teen, I found a paperback book that was, I think, titled KG200 … It was a decent little historical thriller about how the Luftwaffle planned to use a group of captured B-17s to flatten the British Parliment, kill Churchill and alter the course of the war. At the time I was thinking, No way could this have happened, because many of the details were quite specific, but over time came to find out that much of it was true (except for the Parliment bombing plan). Unfortunately, that book was in a box that vanished during a move, and I have never been able to find a copy since.
I’ve always wondered what hapened to those “super secret” Norden bombsights.
It rapidly got to the point that they weren’t so secret anymore, although we undoubtedly continued to treat them that way.
Darwin, O.F. [alien]
Try to find a book by Ladisla Farago (sp.?), who also wrote a biography on Patton, on the German Intelligence agencies during the war. He describes where US troops found a pre-production version of the Norden in a house Bavaria after the fall of Berlin, so the Germans had had it since before the war. The British also used small numbers of JU-52’s as they were a commercial airliner before the war used by several different countries. For an account of the Italian pilot named Rossi who used a captured P-38 to shoot down American bombers until he was shot down by a baited B-17, look at Martin Caidin’s B-17 book.
KG 200, by J.D. Gillman, 1977. A good read!
Actually, the Norden bombsight was never a secret from the get go. One of the chief engineers involved in the development of the sight was a German nationalist immigrant, and passed the plans to the German government before the war.
The U.S. was unaware of this until after the war, and took extreme precautions to avoid the sight falling into enemy hands, all for naught as it turned out.
The Dutch have not owned or operated the He-115. However, they did use the Fokker T-VIII during the war in RAF service. On occasion these were used for covert missions in to the occupied Netherlands.
Several airforces have operationly used captured planes during WWII, the Finish are a another wel know example.
I have seen the Do-200 in a book I was reading a while back. Interesting subject. Doe’s any one know if there are decals that one could model the Do-200 from a B-17 kit?