Amongst my acknowledgments in the first pages of Flying Fox one will read the following:
"Bruno Schmäling, who had the good fortune of personally knowing Otto
Fuchs, made very critical contributions in supplying background information to
the creation of the novel, a valuable photograph of Otto Fuchs' first victory,
as well as a nice photo of his aircraft in flight, and a previously unpublished
chapter from the original manuscript of Wir
Flieger."
I obtained the last-mentioned item, which appears in
translation as "Appendix 2: A Lost Chapter" in Flying Fox, during a visit to Bruno's home southeast of Munich in
2010. While I was there, Bruno asked me whether I would be willing to translate
a book he and Winfried Bock were working on into English. It concerned a
history of Jagdstaffel 30, a fighter unit which, bearing the fictional
designation Jagdstaffel 136, is central to Fuchs' novel. Feeling that one good
turn deserved another, I readily agreed.
The book, with the title Royal Prussian Jagdstaffel 30, was published by Aeronaut Books at
the end of June 2014. It has been enthusiastically received by World War I
aviation enthusiasts (as evidenced, for instance, in comments posted at
www.theaerodrome.com), and at the time of this blog posting has received seven
5-star ratings at www.amazon.com.
The visual quality alone is quite striking, with three
commissioned paintings gracing the front and back covers as well as the page
immediately preceding the color aircraft profile section at the end of the book.
There are color profiles of 56 aircraft belonging to Jagdstaffel 30, along with
some color illustrations of individual aircraft markings. In addition, there
are dozens of photos of pilots, planes, documents, and maps, reproduced in
generous size and many never before published.
Royal Prussian
Jagdstaffel 30 is a fine companion volume to Flying Fox. Fuchs' novel is often quoted in the first half of the book.
There are also a few quotes from interviews with Fuchs added. For instance, Fuchs'
discussion of the cooperation between Flieger-Abteilung (A)292b and Jagdstaffel
30, his explanation about the use of "Ketten" (the German equivalent
of flights, though they numbered only three or four aircraft), and a comment
regarding his first victory are taken from interviews and are not found in Wir Flieger.
During the late '70s and early '80s Bruno made exhaustive
efforts to obtain information and photographs from surviving German veteran
flyers of the First World War, and sought exact details regarding unit color
schemes and the personal markings of pilots. This unique and valuable
information is now finally being made available to the public. Royal Prussian Jagdstaffel 30 is the
first of a series of books planned. Next in line are histories of Jagdstaffel 23b and Jagdstaffel 5.
However, once more erroneous changes were made to my
translation. I don't believe that Bruno was responsible for any of these
changes. He passed on my translation directly to Winfried Bock, whose changes
were accepted without further question. I don't know if any further editing was
performed by Aeronaut Books. This blog was initially created to defend my
reputation vis-à-vis
such tampering, and unfortunately it continues to be necessary for that
purpose. Following is a list of those errors specific to changes in my
translation, and does not include typographical errors or possible factual
errors in the text.
These errors are but small flaws in what is a very fine
book. Some further corrections and additions to Royal Prussian Jagdstaffel 30 will be appended to the next book in
the series on German Jagdstaffeln.
Errata
Page 5: The first, and most blatant and embarrassing, alteration
concerns the translation of the heading "Vorwort." This means
"foreword," and that is how I translated it. However, Foreword was changed to Forward. Since "foreword" and
"forward" are homonyms, this can be a source of confusion for some
people. I, on the other hand, am very aware of the distinction. As proof, one
need only look at page 26 of Flying Fox,
where I translated "Vorwort des Herausgebers" as "Editor's
Foreword."
Page 8: "Flieger-Ersatz-Abteilung 11 in Breslau was put in set-up
process for the formation."
Comment: I had written
"Flieger-Ersatz-Abteilung 11 in Breslau was put in charge of its
formation." The original German was: "Mit der Durchführung der
Aufstellung wurde die Flieger-Ersatz-Abteilung (FEA) 11 in Breslau
beauftragt." The verb "beauftragen" can vary in meaning. It's
based on the noun "Auftrag," which refers to a job or task. The basic
idea of "beauftragen" is assigning someone a task to perform. The
expression "beauftragen mit" ("mit" = "with") is
commonly translated as "put in charge of." An inexperienced
translator clinging to the literal might have written:
"Flieger-Ersatz-Abteilung 11 was commissioned with the carrying out of the
setting up in Breslau." This is the sort of awkwardness which can result
from a false sense of "integrity" in translation. The translator's
proper task is to render a text in a form which seems natural to the reader.
This is a well-founded concept which goes back to Martin Luther's
"Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen" written in 1530. The phrase "put in
set-up process for the formation" will strike a native speaker of English
as unnatural.
Page 13: "Paul Erbguth was born on November 20, 1891 in
Reichenbach in the Vogtland (Kingdom of Saxonia) as the son of a book
dealer."
Comment: That should be
"Kingdom of Saxony." That is how it appears for instance on page 63
in the statement that Paul Erbguth's green and white tail markings
"represented the Kingdom of Saxony." Winfried (I would guess) was
right to insert the explanation that the Vogtland is in Saxony, he just made a
mistake in assuming it would have the same -ia ending as "Bavaria."
Page 16: "This also proceeds from an British order . .
."
This originally read:
"from an English order." The word "British" was substituted
for "English" without changing "an" to "a". The
original German was "englischen Befehl." If I see the word
"englisch," I tend to translate it as "English," though
"British" is often a more accurate term.
Page 21: The same mistake as above is made in the phrase "an
British machine."
Page 25: The word "marksmen" should be
"marksman."
Page 29: "Special Duty Officer." This is a literal
translation of each word in the original German term "Offizier zur
besonderen Verwendung." I had translated it as "adjutant," as
that is the English equivalent. This is made clear in Friedrich Wilhelm
Radenbach's book Weit im Rücken des
Feindes, where this WWI pilot states: "Den Ausdruck 'Adjutant' kennt
man bei der Fliegerei nicht; diese Herren hatten die offizielle Bezeichnung:
Offiziere zur besonderen Verwendung" ("In aviation one does not use
the term 'adjutant'; these gentlemen had the official designation Offiziere zur besonderen Verwendung").
"Offiziere" is the plural form of "Offizier."
Page 32: "An Kanone . . ." My original translation was
"An ace," which is the closest English equivalent for this German
term. I have no objection to using the original German word, but the indefinite
article should have been changed accordingly.
Page 35: "The one time he left it home." This is my
translation (sans ellipsis) of the original sentence "Das einzige Mal, da
er ihn zu Hause ließ . . .", which one will find on p. 118 of Flying Fox. There were a number of
quotes from Fuchs' autobiographical novel in Royal Prussian Jagdstaffel 30, which, to save time, I simply copied
and pasted from my manuscript. This is a sentence fragment which should have
been left out. It can only be understood within the context of the entire
conversation in the novel, which does not appear here.
Page 43: "Otto took off with one of the Staffel's Kette . .
." I had written "with one of the Staffel's flights." A
"Kette" had the functional equivalent of a "flight" in a
British or American squadron, but would consist of three or four aircraft
instead of a typical six aircraft found in a "flight". The German air
service suffered from a numerical inferiority compared to the Allies throughout
the war, and consequently their aerial units had fewer aircraft. Thus a German
"Jagdstaffel" officially consisted of 14 aircraft, while a British or
American "fighter squadron" typically had 18 or more. There are many who
prefer to translate these terms on a strictly numerical basis, rather than
taking into consideration a unit's internal structure in terms of personnel and
how it operated within the overall structure of the air service. The numbering
system is one indicator of this. The Germans had, for instance, Jagdstaffel 1, Jagdstaffel 2, etc., while the British had 1 Squadron, 2 Squadron,
etc. There are many who will object to the translation of "Staffel"
as "squadron," though this is the actual translation one will find in
a German-English dictionary. Instead the term "pursuit flight" is
often used as a translation for "Jagdstaffel" by the strictly
numerically-minded. The term "flight" doesn't actually correspond to the official number of
14 aircraft, though German Jagdstaffeln were in fact often reduced to six
aircraft through combat losses and supply problems. Having said all this, the
actual error is in the form of the plural, which should be "Ketten."
Page 52: There are a couple spelling errors in the caption for the
lower right photo: "of the crashed Bristol Fighters A7139" and
"souvenier." I translated some, but not all, of the captions. None of
the many errors to be found in them are my fault. The "s" added to
"Fighters" is actually based on the German ending for a genitive
singular form.
Page 53: There should be a period after "torn away".
Page 63: I wrote "lozenges," not "lotzenges." I
suppose the "t" was added to represent the German "ts"
pronunciation of "z".
Page 64: The entire final paragraph of this chapter in my
translation read: "Albatros D.III D.791/17 had a—supposedly—white cross
stripe on the fuselage, while Albatros D.III D.2304/16 had a dark oval. The
identity of the two pilots is not known." So everything else was added by
the author(s). So some of the odd wording like "The reason to use this
color" does not stem from me.
Page 68: "Ketten" should be "Kette".
Page 70: There should be a comma after "Albatros D
III" in "an old Albatros D III 799/17". It wasn't in the
original German text, and so I left it out.
Page 86: "Royal Württembergian" should be
"Royal Württemberg." I wrote the latter. On the following page one
will see this in "Württemberg pilots," instead of
"Württembergian pilots." One will also find the adjective
"Württemberg" instead of "Württembergian" on pages 90 and
98.
Page 103: The phrase "short after November 15th"
should read "shortly after November 15th." My
original translation was "around November 15th".
Page 115: "SE5as" should be "SE5a's." The
rule for inserting an apostrophe in a plural form is explained in The Chicago Manual of Style as follows:
"To aid comprehension, lowercase letters form the plural with an
apostrophe and an s." (7.14) The example given is "x's and y's,"
but this applies as well to the "a" appended to "SE5". This
was the plural form I used in my translation, but "SE5a's" was
changed here as well as on pages 124 and 131. The correct plural form was
however retained on page 128 with "Roland D VIa's". Incidentally, the
correct form is "Roland D.VIa's" with a period. That applies to all
other German aircraft designations (Albatros D.III, etc.). I put the periods
in, but they were removed in all cases except in "Pfalz D.XII." I
don't know why in this instance the period was left in. Because "Fokker D.VII" ends in an
uppercase letter, the plural would be "Fokker D.VIIs." This plural
form was used in most instances, although it also appeared as "Fokker D
VII's" in the book (as on page 131).
Page 123: The word "pilot's" should be
"pilots".
Page 124: "On July 17, 1918 the Staffel, under the
leadership of its old and new Staffelführers . . ."
I had written: "On July 17, 1918 the Staffel, under the leadership
of its old and new commanders . . ." The plural of
"Staffelführer" is "Staffelführer," i.e., there is no
difference between the singular and plural forms in German. I try to avoid
mixing English plural forms with German words. I had done so in this instance
by using the word "commanders," and also avoided the redundancy
of "Staffel" -
"Staffelführer."
Page 126: "The past week again brought new records in the
number of enemy aerial 'Geschwader' (formations) deployed."
I had written: "The past week again brought new records in the
number of enemy aerial formations deployed." There was no need to insert
the German term "Geschwader." The translation "formations"
stood on its own. However, the insertion of the superfluous word
"Geschwader" did necessitate an explanation, which was then added on
the following page. This became necessary, since wings in the German air
service are also called "Geschwader," and so inserting the word
"Geschwader" could confuse some of the readers. So what was the
purpose in inserting it?
Page 131: "Staffelführerachieved" should of course be
two words.
Page 132: "This claim was Oblt. von der Marwitz last
victory." The possessive form is missing. It could be written
"Marwitz'" or "Marwitz's". Also, "a FEA" should
be "an FEA" and "recogonize" should be
"recognize".
Page 135: Some of the wording here is not from my translation,
such as: "Only of limited information of the further life of members of
Jagdstaffel 30 could be found."
There are also various misspellings on pages 136 and 176-177 which I
will not list here. I am in any event not responsible for them.
