2Lt. Alfred B. Abeles, 430FS, KIA

[Horst Weber]

Good evening Gary !

After cross-checking your thoughts, I must correct myself. When you are in the possession of the the pilot's IDPF, then you know about the postwar attempts, to clear the case. in so far, please forget my thougt of a crash in allied hold territory.

This seems to be one of the typical MIA cases which happened in the battle-zone. The a/c came down and the pilot was buried (or not) by German troops, trying to get away from the approaching U.S. troops. Postwar, no one remembers, where the body of the pilot was buried and the civilians had been evacuated to safer places.

If this case didn't find an entrance into the Luftgau-records, is nearly no chance, to clear it. As you know, were the days of January 22nd, 23rd + the days, when the remaining units of the 6th SS-Panzerarmee released from the Northern part of the Ardennes and a lot of military-road traffic was "bumper-on-bumper" on the eastbound roads off the Ardennes. This traffic was led over the main-roads B 51 and B 410.

My guess is, that Abeles flight attacked one of those columns and it came there to the accident. Nobody knows, how badly his corpus was burnt or whatever happened finally on the ground. Noone knows, if he was buried or not. There is no trace in an available German document about him.

There are still some, but not many MIA cases under the same circumstances and the same time-frame to be solved.

Good luck !

Horst Weber