9 December 1943 - YAK 1 loss (Lipfert's 74th victory)

[HGabor]

Thank you Nick. Just a few days ago son of Gv.Capt. Armen Artemovich Karakozov visited Nagymányok, Hungary and the crash site of his Dad that he never knew... His Dad was the captain of soviet 14 GvAP DD B-25 Mitchell (S/N. 42-32474, Red '12') on August 9/10, 1944 when Fw. Eckart Ulmer (8./NJG 6) downed them. Their Mitchell unit flew partisan supply-drop missions over Yugoslavia and German night fighters were hunting for them during their approach. According to the soviet mission report that we have, they took off from Kalinovka and dropped the No.2527, 2526, 2553, 2540, 2525, 2567, 2575 and 2619 supply containers at Samarica, Croatia. They were downed on their way back over Hungary. In the village original crash photos showed the wrecks and '474' was visible on it. Yurii visited the site in the forest with my friends' team and wanted to be there alone for a while... Then he took a bag of soil ... when ironically 2 more pieces of melted aluminum chunks were found. After having a nice lunch, reviewing the recovered wrecks of his Dad's plane, placing flowers to the memorial of the six, once "unknown" soviet airmen in the village, he returned to Russia. It's shocking to see as he places flowers to his own father's memorial... He also took some soil to the brother of one of his father's crewmembers whom he knows, and who was too old now for the trip and could not come with him. Another "case" is closed. Hard to say anything.