Thanks for the info Chuck and Deruelle. This was a huge help and I really appreciate it!
Chuck, do you have all 7 volumes of "Aviation Awards of Imperial Germany" or just volumes 5 thru 7? If so, what are your favorite volumes? I would love to have this series of books, but I've heard the early volumes cost a fortune. I was thinking about picking up volume #7 while it is still affordable. New hardcover ones are still available for $60 and used ones in good condition (but paperback) are about $40.
I noticed a discrepancy on the Mecklenburg-Schwerin (MVK) awards. According to the above information, O'Connors book says 17,615 were awarded during WW1, while Voll's book claims the number was 74,875. At first, I thought Voll might have been including the total number of awards produced throughout the life of the medal, which was from 1848 thru 1929. (The Mecklenburg-Schwerin award was awarded in several wars, 1848, 1864, 1866, 1870, and WW1, but that would mean that approximately 75% of the 74,875 MVK's were awarded outside of WW1 and only about 25% were awarded during WW1. IMO, the gap shouldn't be that large.
On the other hand, if O'Connor's figure of 17,615 is correct for WW1, this would mean that more Lippe-Detmold War Merit Crosses (18,374 to 19,374) were awarded. I'm aware of at least 7 German WW2 Field Marshalls that had been awarded the Mecklenburg-Schwerin Military Merit Cross, while only 3 WW2 Field Marshalls had been awarded the Lippe War Merit Cross. Coincidence? Or were most of the Field Marshalls like Goring, who preferred the nicer looking awards. :) The Meck-Schwerin MVK is a very attractive medal! :).
I ran into a similar problem when researching the Prussian EK2. Evidently, the Prussian records were destroyed during WW2 and the estimates out there seem to vary considerably. Some historians claim as many as 6,000,000 EK2's were issued during WW1 and other historians claim that the number is closer to 4,000,000. This is one reason why I chose the 5,196,000 estimate since it is in the middle.
Thanks again for your help.