WW2 german photos of my Grandfather-in-law

[Alex W]

Hello everyone,

My wife and I just found out that her maternal grandfather (long deceased) served in the Luftwaffe before being taken by the Americans as a POW in late 1943, so I'm guessing Italy. I'm pretty excited about it all as my side of the family have British service during the war. The wife's family were a little embarrassed about his service and apparently never talked about it so I have no idea where he served or what he actually did. My plan is to do some research and hopefully his files weren't destroyed during the war. I have found some small photos of him in Luftwaffe uniform and hopefully you guys might be able to tell me something from them. There is an interesting photo of him in a completely different uniform which I know nothing about. The last photo is of his father in what I think could be German WW1 uniform but I'm not sure. My apologies for the bad pictures, my mother-in-law wouldn't let them out of her sight so I had to quickly photograph them with my iPhone.

Any comments or opinions would be appreciated.

Alex

[Gunny Hartmann]

Hard to say which branch of the Luftwaffe he served in but you can count out flying crew or paratroopers, in a black and white photo it's hard to make out the waffenfarbe on his collar tabs.
In the first photo his rank is Flieger (US private or British Aircraftman 2nd Class). Great photos!...

[Alex W]

Thanks Gunny. That is the problem with black and white photos, I'm hoping I can get his war record and that can shed some light on his branch. My mother-in-law does have three letters from him to his wife on US POW paper but its mostly personal content. The only info that I got out of it was that the Americans moved him to Africa which leads me to thinking he was stationed in Italy when captured.

[Jerry B]

I would guess at Flak for his Luftwaffe service, though only a guess from the colour of his collar tabs. The other picture is Reichsarbeitdienst and he would have done that before he was old enough to join the Luftwaffe.

[Gunny Hartmann]

The only other thing i can add is looking at the next to last photo he was once a member of the RAD (Reichsarbeitsdienst).

Jerry beat me to it!.....

[Alex W]

Thanks Jerry and again to you Gunny. That's good to know about the RAD photo, not knowing that uniform was bugging me. I have a feeling two new fields of collecting have just opened up for me.

[harryamb2]

I agree with Jerry,flak unit hence the binos as well.

[Alex W]

Thanks for the reply Harry. I do like the bino photo. I'm thinking its one of those photos that you send home...."this is me at work, hunting for enemy planes."