10 September 1944

[Larry deZeng]

On this date, P-47s from 78th Fighter Gp. blasted a Luftwaffe airfield identified as "Meinbullen". Well, after an exhaustive search through present day maps down to 1:100,00 scale, Google Earth, the 1937 German Atlas, Google, Gazetteers and a large pile of reference books, I have arrived at the conclusion that there is no such place. There was certainly no airfield or airstrip by that name.

There were a lot of aircraft there that day because the 78th claimed 35 destroyed and 18 damaged on the ground at that location, nearly all Ju 88s and He 111s.

There is circumstantial evidence that "Meinbullen" was in the Wiesbaden-Mainz-Frankfurt-Darmstadt area, but I could find no towns or villages with names that approximated "Meinbullen". I even check to see if it might be a natural feature such as a prominent hill or woods, but no luck.

Does the name "Meinbullen" mean anything to any of our members? Believe it or not, American fighter pilots usually had no idea of the correct name of the airfield they were attacking. They would pick the name of some tiny village near the airfield and this is what went into their after-action reports. That it also went into the Fighter Group records and official daily opsums is really surprising.

Larry