# Talk:Hans-Joachim Marseille

what earthly purpose would a differential serve in an aero engine? I have never heard of such a thing. The only gearing in a typical engine is the propeller reduction gearbox, which can look similar to a differential, but doesn't do the same thing. It's just a reduction gear. There can also be gear drive in the camshaft system and the supercharger, but none of those are differentials accommodating different output speeds for a single input speed.  Idumea47b (talk) 19:39, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

It presumably means the prop gearing. The horseshoe oil tank of the 109G's Daimler-Benz DB 605 engine sat over the prop shaft, and an oil leak from that tank, perhaps due to vibration or fragments from propshaft failure, was the suspected cause of the fatal engine fire. A rival theory is that there was a leak from a glycol coolant pipe, glycol being flammable. But a lot could go wrong with the DB605, not least due to its use of plain bearings instead of ball bearings and its use of substandard alloys, these problems reflecting Germany's weakness as to supply of both finished goods and raw materials.
Although the article is better than it used to be, it perhaps understates how futile Marseille's career was. As far as I recall, all of his claims were for single-engined fighters, meaning he simply wasn't doing his job, which was to protect the Afrika Korps from Allied air attack. He never claimed a bomber or an anti-tank aircraft and was concerned solely with inflating his own personal score against Allied fighters, a mistaken notion encouraged by Reich propaganda. The article could perhaps go into how damaging the 'cult of the ace' was for the Luftwaffe. The fact that no one else in JG 27 actually did anything much except record Marseille's supposed victories (of which about a third were overclaims), and that the whole wing had to be withdrawn from theatre due to failure in morale after Marseille's death, does kind of speak for itself. Khamba Tendal (talk) 19:33, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

"After landing in the afternoon of 26 September 1942, he was physically exhausted. Several accounts allude to his Squadron members being visibly shocked at Marseille's physical state. Marseille, according to his own post-battle accounts, had been engaged by a Spitfire pilot in an intense dogfight that began at high altitude and descended to low level. Marseille recounted how both he and his opponent strove to get onto the tail of the other. Both succeeded and fired but each time the pursued managed to turn the table on his attacker. Finally, with only 15 minutes of fuel remaining, he climbed into the sun. The RAF fighter followed and was caught in the glare. Marseille executed a tight turn and roll, fired from 100 m (330 ft) range. The Spitfire caught fire and shed a wing. It crashed into the ground with the pilot still inside. Marseille wrote, "That was the toughest adversary I have ever had. His turns were fabulous... I thought it would be my last fight". The pilot and his unit remain unidentified."
Historian here. There are NO allied records to confirm this. NO allied fighter losses in that area. Maybe there was a dogfight, maybe there wasn't. Maybe he made the story up. 
I would like to know why you think Marseille's word (like most pilots known to exaggerate claims, and Marseille at this point suffering from combat fatigue and immense stress) should weigh heavier than the more neutral and somber Allied records of lost aircraft. The records may be incomplete, of course, but weighing the two against each other and take Marseille's word for it and ignore other evidence is naïve and amateurish, like Wikipedia itself. Well there you have it.45.152.51.135 (talk) 13:04, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Additions to the article need to be conform with Wikipedia:Verifiability. In essence, you need to provide Wikipedia:Reliable sources for your statements. Cheers MisterBee1966 (talk) 12:25, 17 March 2025 (UTC)