BF 109G-10 77022. New gen

[Khorat]

I noted Eddie J. Creek behind the information about this serial (around 20 years ago)


khorat
Michael Balss

[Marc-André Haldimann]

[quote=Nick Beale

P.S. The FIU report on Campoformido says that there were miles of dispersal tracks (many unused) that extended as far as Lavariano so that Bf 109 could have been overloooked near Risano.[/QUOTE]

Does the topography of the area say something regarding the location of W.Nr. 770 22x? The landscape features are flimsy to say the least. The first picture is more revealing: flat country side with a wall running perpendicular to where the plane was found, lying on an earthen dispersal. No mountains nor houses to be seen. The wall in the distance is actually an earthen embankment not dissimilar to those which protect agricultural land from rivers prone to flooding.

I'm not familiar neither with the countryside of Villafranca nor Campoformido. Any ideas if those features can be found there?

Cheers
Marc

[Freddy]

Ferdinando, of course when I wrote I meant all three authors.
I don't know how to translate into English the Italian "vostro" otherwise than with "your".
Roberto told me that he had received documents from you and, on the other hand, in his book that report is transcribed with more detail than on page 214 of Air War Italy. I wonder if it would be more appropriate if Roberto had mentioned in the "Documenti consultati" also the source of them (by the way is also my problem ...), but this is not relevant to the present discussion.
If I referred to Risano-Tissano is only because this airport had already been mentioned several times.

Marc, I know the area very well because, as you know, I live a few miles away. Among other things just on Risano runaway I made my first solo flight in the early 70s.
Of course there were many dispersal tracks all around but the majority were north of the railway Udine-Venice, in the triangle between Udine, Villaorba and Osoppo. I don't know dispersal areas around Lavariano except Aiello airfield which was about 15 km to the south east and that, however, was a subsidiary of Gorizia airport.

Returning to the possible places where the photo could have been taken, I think that it may be the the airfield of Ainring in the Berchtesgaden area (Berchtesgaden had no landing groud).

On Geoff Walden's site, "Third Reich in ruins" in Misc Buildings Part 3 http://www.thirdreichruins.com/miscbldgs3.htm
are shown the sites in the area of ​​Berchtesgaden and among these there is also a picture of the main building in the airport of Ainring-Mitterfelden. If you look on Google Earth at the coordinates 47°48'49.00"N 12°57'36.00"E, you can find that building that now is the Police Station.
(Under the photos there is a link to Mapquest that leads exactly on the main building of the former airport).
No trace remains of the old runaway and of the other airport areas but is possible that it was oriented east-west between the river Saalach and Ainring. That embankment visible in the picture may be the bank of the river as is evident also in Google Earth.

[Marc-André Haldimann]

Thanks Freddy, for sharing your knowledge of the Udine area, and your detailed study. Ah, field archaeology at it's best;-))

Back to the Ainring hypothesis, my issue is that the general "feel" of the vegetation shown around W.Nr. 770 22x does not match the Austrian vegetation, but much more Northern Italy. Notice the conspicuous absence of all pine trees. If you can consult Jerry Crandall's publication on the JV 44 Doras, you will notice that fruit and poplar trees are not to be seen neither in the quite abundant 1945 photos of that airfield, neither in nowadays shots. Besides that, it's rather hard to find an angle for photography excluding the surrounding mountains, the more so in direction of Saalach river.

On another level, the list of aircrafts found in Ainring as written down in the Technical Intelligence report no 34 is partially published in Crandall 1999, p. 52. All told, seven Bf 109's were accounted for. The sketch plan showing the position of five of them is published in p. 48, and none is "kleine Weisse 7". Agreed, this is no hard and absolute evidence against it's presence in Ainring. Maybe Jerry can help us out here quoting what were the tactical marking of the last two Bf 109's, knowing that one was a burnt out Bf 109 G-10 which was blown or strafed before the airfield was overrun as documented by the photo of p. 62 ?

So there we are, left with our question, Freddy. In my eyes, vegetation is a good lead, and, as seen from Geneva, I would rather stick to North-East Italy...

Cheers
Marc

[veltro]

Originally Posted by Freddy

Ferdinando, of course when I wrote I meant all three authors.
I don't know how to translate into English the Italian "vostro" otherwise than with "your".
Roberto told me that he had received documents from you and, on the other hand, in his book that report is transcribed with more detail than on page 214 of Air War Italy. I wonder if it would be more appropriate if Roberto had mentioned in the "Documenti consultati" also the source of them (by the way is also my problem ...), but this is not relevant to the present discussion.

Freddy, I think that my passing comment (with several smilies) wasn't worth of such a serious reply. However, while we are at it, Roberto reported the document in more detail because he had a copy of the original and (luckily) much more space than we were granted back in 1996 by our publisher.

This said, my only objection is that we are focusing too much on an area where we have no proofs Golding was.

The only area we know for sure that he visited is Villafranca airdrome and its sorroundings, so why not to theorize that the plane was left (and found) there?

IMHO, of course...

[Freddy]

Ferdinando, you're absolutely right, I know very well the cost of the space in a publication and how much you have to work to get as much as possible between data and photos without affecting the text and at the same time limiting costs as much as possible.. Among other things, disgracefully, I am also chief editor of a journal of historical studies.
It is also true that too much attention has been put to the place where the picture was taken but there was a hope that this would, at least a little, help in identifying the unit.
You say that we know for sure that Golding visited Villafranca but there is a photo, exactly n. 101 of Album 1 whose caption says "Udine 3 sqd" even though, unfortunately, is the only one in all three albums, that names this location.

Marc, this is pure archaeological methodology. Wishing we could joke about "Dendrology". This is what can be defined as an interdisciplinary research.
Well, jokes aside, I must admit that you are right, in fact it really seems the typical vegetation of my area but, at this point, I cannot imagine where to search for an airfield with similar characteristics.
Unfortunately I haven't the publications to which you refer but certainly an aircraft so well preserved would not have escaped the attention and then it would have been recorded in a FIU report.
In order not to discard anything I also tried to see if in Verona Villafranca there could be a bank of that size but I couldn't find any unless it have been removed after the war and this is also possible.
It's almost certain that a bank of that size might be only along a river quite large and important.
In my area embankments like this can only be found along the rivers Tagliamento, Isonzo and Torre. We can exclude that it could be a road or a railway embankment since the upper edge appears to be grassy. On the other hand, beyond it there are trees and this is a feature quite common along the rivers sides as the strip of land between the bank and the river is rarely cultivated because of seasonal flooding.
The only place that could cater to those assumptions could be Maniago since the landing ground was very close to the river Tagliamento and consequently to its embankments. After the war and until the '90s the old airport was used as a shooting range as you can see at the coordinates 46 ° 6'57 .17 "N 12 ° 43'23 .91" E.
Unfortunately, the other photo of the plane, the 259, does not help us to understand any more unless that the plane was parked in a flat area with characteristics very similar to those of the plain of Friuli.
In the background, behind the plane and just over the white 3, I think I can glimpse something like another plane, but I could be wrong.
It is clear too, but this is irrelevant, that this photo was taken at a later time than the other because the panel to the right of "white 3" had been removed. (Ferdinando, it is the same plane.)

The presence of the aircraft could be explained with an emergency landing after being hit in aerial combat. The position of the flaps, set in the landing position and then not retracted, could suggest this hypothesis. What you see to the right of the black cross would seem to be a hole made by a 20 mm bullet shot from behind and does not seem to be compatible with holes produced by a strafing when the aircraft is on the ground. The other holes seem to have been caused by splinters of an explosive charge placed inside the cabin to destroy the plane before the German retreat. Obviously these are only hypotheses.

With regard to the Werknummer, I tried to manipulate the photo, darkening, increasing the contrast, etc.. On the fixed part of the tail rudder is possible to glimpse only the lower part of the sixth number, which is semicircular. This would restrict the field to the following numbers, 0, 3, 5, 6, 8 and 9. From these, as we have seen, are to be excluded 3 and 8 so remain 0, 5, 6 and 9.
I know this does not help very much but it's anyway something to work on.

[veltro]

Originally Posted by Freddy

Ferdinando, you're absolutely right, I know very well the cost of the space in a publication and how much you have to work to get as much as possible between data and photos without affecting the text and at the same time limiting costs as much as possible.. Among other things, disgracefully, I am also chief editor of a journal of historical studies.

Glad to know that we agree on that and, BTW, all my best wishes for your activity of giving publishing space to history studies.

Originally Posted by Freddy

It is also true that too much attention has been put to the place where the picture was taken but there was a hope that this would, at least a little, help in identifying the unit.

In reality I didn't say that, I said that were focusing too much on an area where we didn't have precise proofs of Golding's presence. I however take as a good point the photo captioned as "Udine", and would be more than happy to verify that the "770 22x" was found in or around there, as it would at least be coherent to the place where we know NAGr.11 was based...

Originally Posted by Freddy

In the background, behind the plane and just over the white 3, I think I can glimpse something like another plane, but I could be wrong.
It is clear too, but this is irrelevant, that this photo was taken at a later time than the other because the panel to the right of "white 3" had been removed. (Ferdinando, it is the same plane.)

I already said in a previous post of this thread that after further examination I agreed with Marc that the two front and rear photographs showed the same aircraft. However, I do not understand why you are referring to the "770 22x" as "white 3", while it is clear that it is a "white 7"...



The smaller number style and placement is perfectly coherent with the one used by NAGr.11, as shown in other photographs of this unit's aircraft.

Hope this helps.

[Nick Beale]

Could the damage shown in Ferdinando's close-up view possibly have been inflicted with a pickaxe or similar, rather than gunfire or shrapnel?

[veltro]

Definitely. Especially when comparing the rear-view photo with the frontal one, where the same area has been completely removed (looted would be the right word?) being clearly the subject of some "souvenir hunter" or of some civilian living in the area, as scrap metal was very valuable at the time and I have more than one reports of entire aicraft being completely dismantled by civilians whose later sold the metal or used it to make pots, pans as well as roofs for henhouses or the like ...

[Freddy]

It 's true, is really a little 7, I had not examined well the picture so I thought that the white mark below could be the bottom of a 3, but in hindsight the upper horizontal line would be too short.
Thanks Ferdinando