After receiving a tip from Bjoern Mueller, I decided to do some of my own investigating. Bjoern Mueller is a resident of the town where Wesley crashed. He has provided some invaluable information and insight in to the crash of Wesley Tibbetts' P-38. Bjoern found that Wes's P-38 was shot down by Stabsfeldwebel Krausse. By looking at a website that lists all of the victories from 1944 German pilots, you can see that Wes's P-38 was the only one that was shot down in that area on that day.

At first I thought that Stabsfeldwebel was the pilot's first name, but it is actually his rank. It is the equivalent of a Sergeant major in the US army or a Flight Officer in the USAAF. Stabsfeldwebel was the highest rank for non-commissioned officers and was reserved to those who had signed up for 12 years of service. The "victories" record showed Krausse had a second victory with the Jagdgeschwader 11. He shot down Wesley while with the 4th fighter squadron and the B-17 while with the 9th fighter squadron.

At the time of Wesley's death, the 4th fighter squadron was part of Jagdgeschwader 11, Gruppe II. This means that Stabsfeldwebel Krausse was, at that time, based out of Wunstorf and flew a Bf 109G.

It appears from this information that Wesley was Krausse's first victory. I am trying to track down what the Film C 2025 is. From what I can tell, it is just the microfiche where this information is recorded. Several sources have stated that these planes did not have gun mounted cameras, so this is probably not referring to a "film" of the battle.

On a side note, I found another fight between Wes's and Krausse's respective fighter groups on the same day, during the same mission. In this fight, it was the German pilot that was shot down. Captain Anthony Tinto of Wesley's 338th Fighter Squadron shot down Gustav von Helms of Krausse's 4th Fighter Squadron on 2/24/44.

It appears to be somewhat of a coincidence that this was Capt. Tinto's first score as well.

The following information is from a site that has a list of Jagdgeschwader 11planes that were shot down during WWII:

This information seems to conflict with the recollection of Bill Burns, who graciously supplied my Grandmother with his recollections of that day as Wes's wingman. He said that he didn't think that the 338th shot down any German planes during this mission. He also said he didn't remember any German Fighters in the area when Wes went down.

I also found a site that lists awards that Wesley received that I was not aware of. (Note that most of the pictures are credited to krukewitt.com)

This new information has given me a new avenue to research and will post information as it comes to light.