other P47 loses in European lakes

[DB601E]

Unfortunately there are only a few left to discover.

I'm searching since about 10 years underwater and in archives for missing AC in alpine lakes, but there are several problems:

1. In the years after war, metal scrap became very precious, so most of the known wrecks have been salvaged already these days. There was a succesfull salvaging company in our region. The company was formed by a former Army Pioneer and two former Luftwaffe soldiers. They salvaged almost every known wreck in southern bavaria, austria and switzerland. The scrap price for a B-17 salvaged 1951 from the Barmsee was about 20 000 Deutsche Mark, that should be today equivalent to about 400 000 US Dollars (Comparison based on prices for real estate). I was in contact with one of the salvage divers some years ago. (He died 2009). In his photo collection of salvaged aircrafts, i found almost every AC, i was looking for so long underwater doing severall hundred dives :-(
So i started a second research: Which aircraft have been already salvaged. This was even harder, compared to finding the ones crashed in the lakes, as there are sometimes no documents about a salvage, only the memories of old local people and the salvage divers.

2. Some lakes are very deep, and every spring, rivers bring so much sediment in some alpine lakes, that some wrecks are covered today with up to some meters of silt.

3. Some lakes are private or forbidden to dive because of nature protection.

4. Some AC crashed in the lake with high speed, breaking up in small pieces, so they are very hard to locate.

So finally, i know some AC seem to be still in the lakes and i don't have any information, that they have been salvaged already. But because of point 2, finding them will become very hard and so very expensive. But as i'm not Scrooge McDuck, i advance very slowly.

Regards

Lino

[Tony Kambic]

Is there any further update on this aircraft?

FW-190 A-4 ( 142454 ) Loss date: 04/07/43

Lt. Rudolf Wieprecht 10./JG 2 9 Blue
Known to be in 'lac de Grand Lieu' in France with pilot's body still in aircraft.

[DaveM2]

Tony

Last I heard was that the relative of the pilot was not interested in making the request to authorities to have the pilot/aircraft recovered, despite efforts by several people in France who were willing to lobby the local authorities on his behalf....

Dave

[gilles collaveri]

great Lino, thanks but don't you have an english version of your articles ?

cheers

Gilles

[markjsheppard]

Personnally, would love to trawl over Schwerinersee with a 'fishfinder' or something as simple.

There is a MiG-15/17 at the bottom. also Fw190D, Bu131, Yak 9 loses over/in it. Would be good just even to get some scans to work on.

The Fw190D recovered in 1990 was researched as one number/pilot but the one recovered was another! (At least 4 Fw190D's in April/May 45).

No diving or salvage before 1990 we know of.

Same for some of the other 'East' German lakes.

One day.

Mark