B-24 Liberator-downed on April 25, 1945-Austria

[johngreenman]

Originally Posted by DB601E

Hi John,

is there information given by the witness, if the AC may have crashed in the lake or in the surrounding hills?

Along the way: the lake near Gmund is called Traunsee. A P-47 was salvaged there some years ago.

Greetings

Lino

Hello Lino,
Thank you very much for responding to this!
I just spoke with my Uncle about your question. He has a copy of the book, Berlin Diaries, in which the bomber is mentioned as "circling over the lake" (which would be what would happen when a plane is only being kept aloft by 2 engines on one side of the plane, as it runs out of gas).
The Diary also mentions:" as it banked and swept down towards us...it crashed into our park and was burning when we arrived to see it."
This means that it crashed into a "park" in Gmunden!!!

My Uncle also mentioned that he had been in touch with Wolfgang Neuwirth who lives (lived?) near Linz. The Archivist from the town of Wels gave Wolfgang my uncle's contact information...but my uncle never heard anything back from Wolfganf N. after he had given him all the information about the bomber that he could.

-John