It was mentioned in the first post that Martha Gellhorn described the incident in her book.
Starting here and on the following page is that description:
https://books.google.com/books?id=wk...gne%22&f=false
UPDATE: It looks like Google has decided to block some of the book pages. This morning you could see both of the pages where Gellhorn fully described the incident but when I checked this afternoon, you are only allowed to see the first page. Apparently, if too many people look at a page in a short period of time, Google will block viewing of the page.
Here is what it said.
"“Yesterday it (ack-ack) operated effectively and a B-26 was shot down and a column of black smoke rose straight and mountain-high. It looked like a funeral pyre to all of us. Tanks of the Thirteenth Armored Division were moving up across the river, behind the burning plane, but the crew was there in a belt of Germans, and no one could reach them. From a 505th Regimental observation post, some paratroopers had seen four men get out of the plane. That was at about one o’clock on a soft clear day. At six o’clock began one of the strangest episodes anyone had yet seen in this war—and there were a few men present who had survived all four 82nd Airborne missions and the Battle of the Bulge and could be expected to have seen everything.
Across the Rhine on the green bank someone started waving a white flag. This was ignored, because it does not necessarily mean anything. Then a procession came down to a landing pier. They carried a Red Cross flag. Through binoculars, we could see a medic, a priest, and two German soldiers carrying a stretcher. A landing craft put out from our bank, well covered by our machine guns in case this was all a sinister joke. Presently on both banks of the Rhine there was an audience; normally no one would move in this area in daylight, and even at night you would be careful. Now we stood in the sun and gaped. Slowly three more stretchers were carried down to our boat. We could see civilians over there, children, German soldiers; everyone was out staring at everyone else. We could not quite believe it and were still prepared to dive for cover quickly. The little boat was launched into the current, but it drifted farther downstream and we followed it on our side, like people streaming along a racecourse to watch the horses come in. The boat landed and our medic, who had gone over to get these four wounded men, the survivors of the B-26 crew, shouted to clear the banks because the Krauts said they’d give the ambulance time to load them then they would open up. The war had stopped for approximately and hour on a hundred-yard front.
“I never saw the Krauts act so nice,” one soldier said, as we wandered back to the buildings where we would not make such tasty targets.
“They know our tanks are coming up,” another soldier said. “Krauts don’t act nice for nothing.”"
A couple of observations. I don't think the tanks of the 13th Armored Division would have been "in sight" at this time. They were moving up from the south on the east bank of the Rhine, but they would probably have been still miles away on April 11th. Gellhorn may just mean that she "knew" American tanks were moving from the south to cut off this part of the "pocket".
I read Gellhorn's description to mean that the plane actually crash landed and the 505th soldiers saw men "get out" of the plane after it had crashed and started to burn. I don't think the crew parachuted out. If they had, I think she would have used phrases such as "bail out" or "jumped out", etc. A crash landing would also possibly account for the serious injuries (and burns) of the crew.
This B-26 supposedly had a crew of six men. We know that Dwyer died (possible in the plane before it crashed or at the crash site). Gellhorn describes four injured men on stretchers. Was the final (sixth) crewman able to walk and he was also on the boat?