Kittyhawk downed - Italy 22/04/1945

[BasilW]

I am looking any information regarding a Kittyhawk that was downed by flak on 22/04/1945. My hope is that someone has info on this but from the German perspective, but I would be happy to hear from anyone regarding this. This could be picture/s or info released from the unit/s that would have been responsible for setting up the AA. The aircraft went down just north of Ferrara, Italy.

[Nick Beale]

This a difficult time frame: 10 days or so into the final Allied offensive and a week before the Germans in Italy surrendered. I've looked at a fair bit of luftwaffe material from Italy in 1945 but I don't remember anything about Flak successes (although it wasn't what I was after).

Army Flak (even small arms) could have been responsible though if your Kittyhawk was attacking troops in the field. There were also Italian anti-aircraft units in Northern Italy, although I'mnot sure how active they were at this late stage.

[BasilW]

The only info that we have is that it there was flak and most probably small arms fire. There was definately not a dog fight. We have this on good authority, I believe the flight leader. We are hoping that there would be some kind of official record of the aircraft having being brought down. Is there any way of determining this. Any place that we could search German military records of the forces that would have been in that area at that time?

[Nick Beale]

I can confirm that there wasn't a dog fight, I spent 8 years working on a book about the Axis air forces in Italy. the only German or Italian daylight activity I and my co-authors found for 22 April was a recon mission by an Ar 234.

I'm no expert on ground forces but for records of German forces in the area (essentially lements of the German 10th and 14th Armies) you're probably going to have to try either Bundesarchiv, Freiburg (they have an online file index) or possibly the Imperial War Museum Department of Documents. I don't know what the USA has.

You could start with the bibliography and source notes in one of the serious histories of the Italian campaign to see if that gives you any leads.

If you want a picture of what the Allies were up to, National Archives file AIR23/6513 will give you the daily operations/intelligence report.

[Buz]

Aircraft was FX820 of 250Sqdn

[BasilW]

Firstly to Nick, thanks for the info. I'm going to try and track the details down. Do you think there would be any chance of us colaborating outside of the forum regarding some of these details if I have difficulty in tracking them down? Send me a mail directly on basil.webster@siemens.com if you don't have a problem with this. I appreciate the leads that you have provided.

Buz, thanks, I hadn't mentioned much detail in any of my posts. We did have this info. However (not being one to shut a door), how did you happen on the info and do you have more on this aircraft? We know that it was shipped from South Africa and that it had been in for repairs on a number of occations (Cat 1 and 2 damage), but we would like to track it's 'life' in Europe. If you are adverse to it, mail me outside of the forum if you wish on the address I gave to Nick.