
Me323 Gigants of the Cap Bon Massacre April 22nd 1943

A semihistorical skinpack with 16 fully marked Me323, based as well as possible on historical photographs. All fuselage codes are 100% historical.   
The very most of the original a/c were early D-1 to D-6 variants, the game variant is closest to the E variant, which i. e. had the two additional upper wing turrets to increase defensive fire power. 
Many compromises were necessary because of assymetrical mapping and stretching of the 3D model, so forgive me it wasn't always possible to skin all details 100% correctly/historically.
Included are all 16 Me323 which belonged to KGzbV323 and were assigned for the april 22nd 1943 mission. C8+BN failed to take off and C8+AF aborted the mission and returned to base.  

The Paintschemes: 

The gigants flew either with factory codes (black coloured Stammkennzeichen) or unit codes, which were painted over the factory ones when assigned. I found no 'rules' why some received unit codes and 
others never. As always with the luftwaffe of WWII there were variations in the camo (RLM 70/71/65 splinter camouflage) and in the style of letters and numbers. 
KGzbV323, which later became TG5, had three unit emblems:  A flying elephant carrying a case for I.Group, Baron von Mnchhausen riding a cannonball towed by geese for II.Group and
a prop with oak leaves and the number 6 for Stab I.Group. The emblems weren't applied always. 
 
Unit codes for Stab and the 3 Staffeln of I./KGzbV323 were C8+?B-E-F-G. There isn't any evidence for a real existence of a 4th Staffel. Staffelcolours were green-white-red-yellow. 
At cap bon all gigants of I,/KGzbV323 - except C8+AF, which aborted the mission - were still factory coded.Tactical tail markings adopted in the MTO were X1-? and used by
I.Group until about early 1944. 
Unit codes for Stab and the four Staffeln of II./KGzbV323 were C8+?C-N-P-R-S. Colours here were green-white-red-yellow-blue. Tactical tail markings (Y1-?) usually not used from summer 1943 onwards.
Code letters were of different styles. 
All a/c of II./KGzbV323 were unit coded (C8+) at cap bon. After cap bon The remnants of II./KGzbV323 gave all it's a/c to I./KGzbV323 (renamed I./TG in may) and moved to Germany 
(therefore some a/c of I.Gruppe served with the Y tail letter of II.Gruppe). There it formed a new II./TG5 from III./KGzbV323 in summer 1943.   
No a/c of 8.Staffel at cap bon, it is unclear if this staffel was operational before summer 1943.
There were no more transports to tunisia by gigants after the cap bon losses.  


For a report of the cap bon events see included word file.    





Credits/Sources:

Foo'bar and Sparty for using their templates
Hans-Peter Dabrowski, book author of the no1 reference 'luftwaffe giants in WWII' (schiffer publishing 2002),
who patiently answered all my questions
'...schleppte und flog Giganten' (towed and flew gigants) by Ernst Peter
Transporter Vol.1 and 2 by Martin Pegg (classic publications)
'Messerschmitt Giganten und der Fliegerhorst Regensburg-Obertraubling' by Peter Schmoll
'Die Giganten Me321 Me323' by Kurt Pawlas
'Transporter' wer kennt sie schon... by Karl Kssler
Luftwaffe Experten Message Board & Stammkennzeichen database
Luftarchiv.de

As always the skins are free for noncommercial use only. Any reupload requires my permission.
Hope you enjoy these works - your feedback is much appreciated!

ATB
Cheruskerarmin

mailto  cheruskerarmin@freenet.de
