Goshawk Crest on Fokker E.6/15

[dvosburgh]

Hello All

(Moderators please take note: I posted this in the "Insignia" section as the info I'm seeking has more to do with the personal badge on the aeroplane than anything to do with the a/c itself. If it needs to be moved, please do so, and thank you in advance!)

According to the late Alex Imrie in his Fokker Fighters of World War One this Eindecker may well be sporting one the earliest personal marking to be used in the German air service. Based on what I've seen German pilots had a penchant for using former regimental identifiers as their personal emblems, and this one looks suspiciously heraldric to me, bearing something of a resemblance to the Imperial eagle in the second picture—that blob on the fuselage above the hawk looks a lot like a crown of some description, anyway. So I'm wondering whether this might be a previous ground-unit badge that the pilot chose, or perhaps a Saxon emblem...?

The pilot is identified as Unteroffizier Richard Dietrich of Feldfliegerabteilung 24 (a unit formed in Grossenhain, Saxony in Aug. 1914), who went on after the Great War to be part of an aircraft manufacturing firm, only to vanish into an NKVD gulag at the end of WWII. Does anyone know of a clearer photo? Imrie doesn't give a source for his image, and while Ray Rimell reprinted this view (as well as a second, from the starboard side) in Windsock Datafile No. 91 neither shows any clear detail of the marking. 

I'd be grateful if anyone recognizes this little Habitch, or can shed some additional light on the marking.

Dave