Me 262 fuselages found in railcars at Grazburg

[Richard T. Eger]

Dear All,

In Carl Hildebrandt's Broken Eagles 4: ME262A, there appears a photo on page 14 with the following caption:

"Brand new unpained (unpainted) ME262 fuselages found in railcars at Grazburg, 1945."

The problem I have is that I have no idea where Grazburg is or whether that is even the correct spelling. Can anyone help me out with this?

Regards,
Richard

[harrison987]

mmmmmmmmmmm...

i suspect they mean Grazer Burg....which is a large castle in Graz, Austria. I think a railroad was close by...

Thoughts?

Mike

[sirbob]

There is a Grasberg near Bremen.

And a Grätzberg somewhere in Bavaria, I think.

[Richard T. Eger]

Dear All,

Yes, there are multiple Graz's and, IIRC, a Graseberg. I was sort of hoping that Grazburg just might be a suburb of one of the Graz's.

The other option would be to ask Carl Hildebrandt directly, assuming he is still alive and someone can put me in touch with him.

The fuselages are the combined mittel and hinterteil, that is, lacking the nose and tail. St. Georgen an der Gusen produced such, but there were other places involved as well. Eventually, these middle/rear fuselages would have reached one of the final assembly facilities, so we have to have a location that logically is on the route from point A to point B.

Regards,
Richard

[GrafWolf]

Hello!

Another proposal: Günzburg
Günzburg is located on the railway München- Stuttgart.
Airfield Leipheim and the mounting factories Kuno I and Kuno II
were only a few kilometers away.

Herzliche Grüsse aus Oberschwaben,

Wolfgang

[Richard T. Eger]

Dear All,

A member kindly gave me Carl's contact info. I gave him a call. He no longer had the photo in question, but his opinion was that he wrote down whatever he thought was marked on the back by the G.I. We agreed that the G.I. could easily have gotten it wrong, but at this point "Grazburg" is all we have to go on. "Günzburg" is a fitting option, but would mean that Carl would have had to have badly misread 2 very different letters.

Regards,
Richard

[Dan O'Connell]

Any place with a close spelling near REIHMAG?

[Pegasus123]

I agree to Wolfgang, this could be Günzburg (in German you can also write it "Guenzburg", ue=ü)
Günzburg is situated close to the three Waldwerke at Burgau/Scheppach Forest, Riedheim and Justing forest, where the Me262's had been completed, and Leipheim airbase where the planes took off. In 1944 and 1945 the autobahn and the railway lines arround Leipheim/Günzburg were heavily used for the transport of Me262 parts.
After Leipheim airbase was destroyed by heavy bombing, the jets took off from the Autobahn (Stuttgart-Munich) at Günzburg.

Regards

Harold

[Vince Malfara]

Just my thoughts. Graz, Austria may be the location, it did have a marshaling yard which was bombed by the 459th BG several times. The 262's could have been shipped through there.
It's a thought.

Vince...

[Richard Aigner]

Graz:
1) The "Burg" at Graz is called Schlossberg, and I have never heard the city referred to as "Grazburg" or anytime remotely like it. The marshalling yards are about 2 km from the Schlossberg.
2) At the end of the war Graz was liberated/occupied by the Red Army, and the British took over in July 1945. I have no idea how likely it was for a US GI to travel in the British zone.
3) Graz is NOT on a beeline from Gusen to Germany but 200+ km to the SSE, almost in the opposite direction; although the route through Graz may have been the shortest practicable one.

Hth, Richard