Here are some accounts:
It's always interesting to compare this kind of description to accounts of the same engagement from other works.
Here's what Richards and Saunders have to say in volume II of
Royal Air Force, 1939-1945:
...On 22nd April they rashly committed a consignment of petrol to Me.323's—six-engined glider-type aircraft which they had previously employed only in small numbers. Several of these huge machines, each carrying some ten tons, attempted the passage under heavy escort. Intercepted over the Gulf of Tunis by seven and a half squadrons of Spitfires and Kittyhawks, the formation was mown down to the last aircraft.
Alan J. Levine tells the story this way in
The War against Rommel's Supply Lines, 1942-1943:
On April 22, the Germans sent in 21 of the huge Me-323s, each carrying 10 tons of fuel to Tunisia. Although the clumsy transports were strongly escorted, this move marked the passage of the Axis daylight transport effort, already irresponsible after April 5, to the stage of insanity. The South Africans sent out 38 P-40s, covered by a South African Spitfire squadron and additional flights of British- and Polish-manned Spitfires. They downed 16 (or possibly 17) Me-323s, an Mc 202, and an Re-2001, and perhaps three or more German fighters. Curiously, Allied losses also are uncertain; at most they lost four P-40s and a Spitfire, which had to belly-land.
In
Fighters over Tunisia, Christopher Shores provides almost two pages about the engagement, concluding with this paragraph:
Final confirmation of the early morning battle credited the DAF fighters with 25 Me 323s, eight Bf 109s, one MC 202 and one Re 2001, at the cost of four Kittyhawks lost and one damaged, one Spitfire belly-landed but repairable, and one damaged. This brought Allied claims for transports since the start of Operation "Flax" to well over 400 for the loss of about 35 fighters while engaged on these operations. However, on this occasion there seems to have been a fair amount of double-claiming again, particularly as the formation of Me 323s was originally assessed to be only 20 strong. While II/JG 27 put losses at 16, Stab/JG 53 reported that 17 Giganten were shot down. In any event, TG.5 was wiped out as a unit.
Dabrowski continues with Me 323 operations in the Med until withdrawn from Italy later in 1943, then on the Russian Front where the transports were pressed into non-stop service supplying threatened and besieged ground forces. The book also covers the USAAF raid on Keckemet in Hungary in June 1944 which destroyed a half-dozen
Giganten on the ground. Chapter 12 deals with the
Waffentraeger ("Weapons Carrier") version of the Me 323, a variant with a strengthened airframe which sacrificed cargo capacity for increased defensive armament and was used exclusively in the escort role. Chapter 13 describes the "Flying Workshop" version which was, as the name implies, fitted out with tools and work benches, stocked with spares, manned by technicians, and utilized to reach and repair
Giganten forced down at remote fields lacking suitable parts or facilities.
The final chapters provide photographic galleries of the
Giganten, including eight pages of color photos. One of the most illuminating is of a German Marder (self-propelled, tracked artillery) being loaded into a Me 323. This photo alone is sufficient to drive home the monstrous hauling capacity of the aircraft. Of several appendices, the most notable are "Formation and Movement of Me 321/Me 323 Units" and "Me 323
Gigant Construction List," the latter with aircraft-by-aircraft data on construction, designation, employment, and eventual disposition.