Going hunting... for 63 yr old game

Leland Pate · 05-20-2007, 01:23 PM

Me and a few other guys I know are going hunting next weekend for the remains of a P-47 that was supposedly downed near Bitburg, Germany in 1944.

Tell me this isn't exciting!

We may not find anything but just meandering around these pristine pastures and woods will be a blast. I've "ahem" brokered a deal with the EOD shop to borrow some ordnance locators which will help us find, mark, and catagorize ferrous objects.

widgeon13 · 05-20-2007, 01:29 PM

Pretty exciting stuff. I lived in Germany in the early 70's and I just loved driving through the back country and visiting with folks so I can imagine what it might be actually looking for something like a P-47. Good luck.

typ550 · 05-20-2007, 02:32 PM

That should be fun.

I spent a couple of days last summer in the Huertgen Forest where my dad served in '44 and early '45. Found lots of foxholes, including some where he was actually dug-in, and lots of shrapnel just lying around on the surface. Also found some aluminum that my guide (a former Wehrmacht soldier) was convinced was aircraft skin.

Watch out for that live ordnance! Don't know about the spot where you are headed, but they're constantly finding live rounds in the area I was in (someone dropped off a batch of grenades on the local musuem's doorstep while i was there).

Joeaksa · 05-20-2007, 03:18 PM

Lee,

Save yourself some time. Find some old timers who lived in that area during the war and talk to them.

Have a friend I used to go hunting with in the Hanover area and he told me about an airplane that his Father had seen crash during the war. It was in a swampy area and they never recovered the plane afterwards.

Found out later that some warbird guys talked to the Father and pulled the plane out, exactly where it was rumoured to be.

The old timers often remember more than you might think if you spend some time with them. Could save you a lot of walking. I have done this for years here in America and a bit in Germany. Not as much left in Germany as anything with value was picked up and sold. They were very poor at that time and needed the money. Good metal detectors also are a big help.

Joeaksa · 05-20-2007, 03:30 PM

There is a B-50 (a B-24 variant) crashed on Bassett Peak here in Arizona. Have hiked up to it several times. Half the plane is still more or less intact, with the nose imbedded in the mountain and tail hanging loose (held by cables and some aluminum) back down the mountain.

I have a photo of it and one radial engine imbedded in the rock.

notfarnow · 05-20-2007, 06:20 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Joeaksa
Lee,

Save yourself some time. Find some old timers who lived in that area during the war and talk to them.

Joe, that reminds me of that WWII tank that was pulled form a swamp in eastern Europe a couple years ago. An old guy had talked about seeing the tracks going into the swamp when he was a kid. 60+ yrs later, they went looking and sure enough, there it was. There's video online of it being pulled out.

It was so well-preserved they were even able to get it working after a while.

Amazing to think of how many hidden artifacts there could be out there. Not many of the old guys left to to shed light anymore.

arcsine · 05-20-2007, 07:24 PM

Good luck with the hunt Leland.

berettafan · 05-20-2007, 09:35 PM

That is really cool. Maybe some pics of your adventure?

Leland Pate · 05-21-2007, 01:14 AM

The P-47 is a long shot as it is such a small aircraft. Another one we are looking into tracking down is a B-26 that went down just 6 km south of Bitburg between Neiderstedem and Esslingen.

A larger aircraft obviously presents more ferrous metal and increases the chances of finding the remains. Some of these wrecks are just piles of junk... some of them are graves and all should be treated as such.

I will certainly post photos if we are actually lucky enough to find anything.

Leland Pate · 05-21-2007, 01:29 AM

Me and my buddy are tring to narrow down which site we want to tackle first. There are thousands of wrecks in this part of Germany/Lux/Belgium. Most are long gone, but many remain.

Here is the initial search area for the B-26.
It's waaaay too big to effectively search with just a handful of people. I'm hoping we can find some residents who may be able to narrow it down to at least one side of the road.

Joeaksa · 03:49 AM

Lee,

Another tip... try to find someone in the aero club on base who will take you up flying. It has to be a sunny day (I know, not many of them in Germany) and go up very early or very late in the day.

You want to be up and flying when the sun is low on the horizon. Fly a few miles East or West of the area you are searching and have everyone looking at the wreck area and into the sun.

The sunshine shining on the ground from a low angle will at times pick up aluminum and you can see it from the air. What to look for is a "twinkling" look from the area and that will lead you to the sight of the wreck.

We found the remains of a B-17 in this manner. Otherwise you would have driven past the site 100 times and never seen a thing.

The areas to look for in the photo above are the tree line futherest away from the roads. Why? Not that the bird crashed there but the more people who walk or drive by, the more likely that they would see the wreck and take bits of it away. As well the tree line can hide things for years, while a plowed and tilled field is not going to hide much but the small bits.

Also if you get near the fields and find an area where nothing grows very well or just looks different from the surrounding areas, look there. Planes crashing scatter hyd fluid and in those days 115/145 octane aviation gasoline everywhere. Depending on how much was in the tanks and if it caught fire or not, the soil can still be contaminated and may show up this way.

Joeaksa · 05-21-2007, 04:05 AM

Look at the shaded areas that I have circled. The area on the right is a very likely spot, and would look at the one on the left as well.

As the areas are out in the middle of a field, you are not going to find any big bits but a metal detector hopefully should give you hundreds of hits. Would still walk the treeline and you might find larger hits there.

svandamme · svandamme's Garage

perhaps you know allready, but legally , this kind of stuff is verboten to touch, and should be reported if anything is found so the professional archelogists can look into this, unless you're organized, and get a dig licence, but those are hard to come by

at least in Belgium it is, but i doubt it's any different elsewhere in Europe

Leland Pate · 05-21-2007, 11:19 AM

Great news! It looks like we've found the wreck site of the B-26.
The P-47 is farther away but the bomber is just outside of Bitburg.
After walking several miles along hills and meadows, we finally came to Esslingen and ran into an elderly lady who was born and raised there. My buddy's wife is German and after a five minute conversation we had our directions. At first she was confused because she didn't know which wreck we were after. I guess there were several in the area (more on that later). But we set off... looking for the B-26.
We are pretty certain we know were it came down. The next step is to figure out what equipment will be needed. As you can see on the map, my original search area was off by about 1km or so.

pwd72s · 05-21-2007, 11:26 AM

Fascinating stuff, Leland...keep the posts coming...

Rick Lee · Rick Lee's Garage

subscribing

widebody911 · widebody911's Garage

me too

Leland Pate · 05-23-2007, 12:34 AM

For those that are interested, I've attached a link to a Google Map I created marking the known/suspected crash sites in the immediate vicininty of my house.

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=113704194839963833741.00000112b46d2fbea8d2e&z=9&om=1

Let me know if the link doesn't work.

I'm going to try an idea I had the other day and see if this works.

I need a way to accurately mark the search areas we visit to prevent walking over covered ground. Since I've taken up cycling recently I bought myself a Garmin Edge 305 (GPS) that allows me to upload my tracks into a database (intended for fitness stuff). I can export my tracks into Goodle Earth and use Google Earth as an interface to chart what ground has been covered and what has not. It's a neat idea that I think may work well to seperate what areas have been searched vs. what has not.

This weekend will be the first actual attempt to mark (not touch) hits with the metal detector with surveyors flags.

Joeaksa · 05-23-2007, 05:16 AM

Lee,

Interesting layout and nice mapping.

How are you finding out about the wrecks, names and BU numbers? I have a list of every aircraft accident from the US Air Force in CONUS, with lat and long positions and basic info, but have never seen the same thing for Europe, especially during WW2.

Joe

Rick Lee · Rick Lee's Garage

You're in a great area for this stuff. You're also less than an hour's drive from Malmedy and probably not much farther from Bastogne. Lots of super history there. Of course, Trier is just down the road from you and it's the oldest city in Germany. There was a small concentration camp between Trier and Bitburg too, though I forget the name. I don't believe there's anything left of it now though. Be sure to bike down to Saarburg (not Saarbruecken) and the Villeroy & Boch factory is nearby too. If you need some good places to eat and drink in Trier, let me know. I did a year there.