An He 111 belly landed in Italy 1945

[veltro]

According to the very small photo attached, the conditions of the He 111 and its apparent absence of camouflage indicates a far more longer exposition to elements than only a few months' time.

I would thus tend to exclude that the plane crash-landed in the spring of 1945, but rather during 1944 at the best.

This further complicates any search for data, because most of the Luftwaffe losses for 1944 and a noticeable part of 1945 are missing from the main archives and studies are on the way to try to retrace the pieces of informations still available.

My only theory at the moment is that the He 111 was most probably a support or transport aircraft of one of the very few Luftwaffe units based in Italy in the latter part of the war.

In fact, most of the Kampfgeschwader units based in Italy had left by mid-1944 and none was equipped with the He 111.

Should further images of the plane turn up through Dott. Pellegrini (two very big and clear prints are visible on his desk in the photo you kindly attached), it would be very interesting to be able to look at them for further clues.

[David Ransome]

Hi Giorgio,

Excellent work! As Ferdinando says, it would be interesting and informative to see any other photos that may be available.

Kind regards,

David