[Lucky Luke]

Hi all,

I am intrigued by a Messerschmitt Bf 109E that I have seen in two different photos.

The aircraft first turned up on ebay in a photo of Goetsenhoven (in French Gossoncourt) airfield near Tienen (in French Tirlemont) in Belgium. It looks like it has no wings but part of it is hidden by the wreck of Koolhoven FK.56 trainer serial K-105 of the Belgian Military Aviation. The tail seems to have been separated from the fuselage. The markings are 14 + - ; no other markings seem to be visible. I am not very good at distinguishing the colour of the code. I will attempt to attach the photo copied from ebay.

To my surprise, what I believe to be the same aircraft turned up in a book about the war in the region between Maastricht (the Netherlands), Tongeren, Liège and Tirlemont in Belgium. The book concentrates on the ground war but it has a few paragraphs about aviation and aircraft crashes. One of these is Bf 109E 14 + - upside down in a orchard somewhere. It looks more or less intact but the tail may have broken off. Location or date of the forced landing is unknown.

I have looked in Pierre Watteeuw book about German fighter losses in Belgium 1940-1942 (Les pertes de la chasse allemande de jour en Belgique Tome I) but as he says in the introduction, the German archives for that period more often than not didn’t include codes and so none of the listed losses could be linked to the photos.

Is there someone for whom this rings a bell?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Best regards
Luc