[jiri]

US post-8 May 1945 victim to Soviet fighters:
This "friedly" fire accident took place on 9 May 1945 over Prague-Ruzyne aerodrome, Czechoslovakia.
The case is in fact unknown, and if not for witness memories that started the unravelling of this mystery, it would be totally forgotten by now. A thorough research in both American and Russian archives has shown that this incident had been preceded the day before by another shooting down of an American aircraft from the same unit over Saxony in Germany.
American Lockheed F-5 photo-recco planes (unarmed version of the famous Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter plane) of the 39th Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron/10th Photographic Group, belonging to the 9th U.S. Air Force were then operating from Y-10 airfield in Wiesbaden, Germany.
On 8 May 1945, the unit was on a Prisoner-of-War Camp Pin-Pointing Mission in Dresden airspace, i.e. in the area recently seized by Soviet troops. Several Soviet Yak fighters of the 106th Guards Fighter
Air Regiment from Cottbus airfield attacked Captain Malcolm L. Nash. Second Lieutenant Lazuta wrongly took Nash´s F-5E for a German Focke Wulf Fw 189 (twin-fuselage plane like F-5), and shot it down in Reichenbach area, approx. 40 kilometres West of Dresden. Captain Nash made a belly landing in the field. Though himself escaping serious injury his F-5E was totally demolished.
On the next day, 9 May 1945 afternoon, the 39th Photo-Recco Squadron sent six F-5s to search for the missing Capt. Nash. Two of the F-5s piloted by 1/Lt Thomas P. Petrus and 2/Lt. Thomas Jackson, flew as far as Prague. By coincidence, this happened when six Soviet American built Bell P-39 Airacobras patrolled the area. They were part of the 100th Guards Fighter Air Regiment (part of the renowned 9th Guards Fighter Air Division led by famous ace, Colonel Alexander I. Pokryschkin), operating from Neuhausen airfi eld (10 km South-East of Cottbus). Soviet fi ghters covered Soviet tanks advancing to Prague, and one of them, Major Vasilyi A. Pschenitchnikov, took the American twin-fuselage F-5 for a German Fw 189. In three machine-gun rounds, he shot down the plane that went down in flames on the Northwestern part of Prague, nearby the Ruzyně airfield.
While 1/Lt Petrus, suffering heavy burns, saved his life on parachute, Maj. Pschenitchnikov on his return added to his score the kill of „Fw 189“, his thirteenth and the last WW2 kill.
The sad irony of all this remains: the last „German“ aircraft shot down over Prague was in fact an Allied one. Even more paradoxical is the fact that the last American plane shot down in European Theatre was not only shot by an Allied pilot but also by an U.S. made aircraft, one of the many supplied by Americans to Soviets under the Lend-Lease Act.

English summary from the article:

Jiri Rajlich: Zapomenutý incident nad Ruzyní 9. května 1945. Historie a vojenstvi, No 3/2008, pp. 24-34.