Major Earl L Abbott O - 660088

[ssg keay]

I know of a B-25 that crashed in Brueggen.

[ssg keay]

Ok, I know who informed JPAC, but it is also very likely the crash-site of CPT James D. Stevens, of the 370th. Danny

[Bluenoser]

Danny ; I was totally blown away by your response ! I looked up Capt . Stevens on fold3 and found some interesting info on him . I see he was lost on 20 Mar 1945 and is laid to rest at the American Cemetery in Margraten , Netherlands . Wish I could get a look at the MACR but couldn't locate one . I wonder , if the armor plate is from his ship why wasn't it salvaged long ago when they found the Captains remains and buried him in Margraten ? In addition , I have never been able to come up with anything suggesting that there were any other aircraft lost in that area , don't know how I could have missed that . Would they have retrieved his body and left his aircraft at the crash site without salvaging it ? You have me scratching my head here . Anyways , thanks for the input . If possible , I would like to speak with the informant . Bob

[pdame141]

I googled Capt. Stevens and found reference to him being shot down by British AAA near Venlo, Belgium on a training flight. My limited experience researching my Great Uncle's 9th AF P-47 unit suggests that no MACRs were created for losses over friendly territory.

[Bluenoser]

Thanks pdame141 , you are 100% correct about Captain Stevens . There is no MACR to be had . Being shot down by so called friendly fire is one of the tragedies of war . That's also what happened to Maj George Preddy of the 352nd FG in Dec of 1944 . He was the leading Mustang Ace in the ETO . He and my Uncle Earl were great friends and they died in less than 30 days of each other ! After thinking about this at great lengths I cannot correlate The Capts. crash site and the circumstances surrounding it to that of Major Abbott's possible crash site . I will do more research . Thanks again . B

[ssg keay]

Bluenoser, those loss records (MACR) are sometimes as accurate as a fortune teller's predictions
They go from last known location. I had a MACR that said, lost near Landshut, but the P-51 came down 200km away at Nuernberg.
Venlo to Bruggen in a P-51 is less then 5 minutes flight!
To answer your question, yes, the Allies would not have interest in recovering his wreckage, they never did on the Continent, that I know of. The Germans would have salvaged it for raw materials. In 2003 I recovered the P-47 of MAJ Chester Slingerland, he is buried in France. I found over 4000 lbs of wreckage and that was after the Germans had salvaged as much as they could. Besides, if the P-51 impacted with the cockpit down, the armor plate could have gone in quite a bit. Also, it was made of steel, which was of limited interest. They wanted aluminum! According to my friend, the site where the armor plate was found was from a very shallow impact crash, not a dive.

Danny