hello
I was redirected from the WW2aircraftnet forum because maybe I could get better support here. So let's start:
I am looking for information about two P-39 Q that were lost in Switzerland short after WWII has ended. These two Airacobras were flying along the river Rhein on a low level flight on 16. July 1945 (cloudy, bad weather) from (probably) Basel towards the lake of Constance. Near Eglisau they crashed into the hill (Irchel). There has been a
story about this accident in the Swiss Newspaper "Tagesanzeiger" in December 2017.
Can anybody give more information about these two aircrafts (escadrilles, colors, armament). The names of the pilots are known as Sgt Francois de Laurens Castelet and Louis Francois Delvolvé they were both killed in the accident. Getting in contact with a Swiss hisotrian I know that one P-39 did have the number 43914 and it had a four blade propeller. Therefore I assume that they were P-39Q versions.
I would like to know as much as possible about these two aircrafts, maybe I will then build them in scale 1:72 as models. It would also be very interesting to know where these Airacobras were come from and what their mission was.
Maybe they were on a routine flight from France to the french occupation zone in southern Germany. According to the sparse information I currently have they could belong to GC II/9 "Auvergne".
I am more familiar with German or English reports about losses and sorties but I assume that these kind of information would also be kept for the French aircraft and their pilots somewhere.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Ueli