long gone but not forgotten,news from Italy

[marentius]

 

well it's a pic of a local (italian) newspaper from last saturday.Making a long story short,there is an italian association named ROMAGNA AIR FINDERS whose goal is to look for the sites of crashes of WW2 planes in Italy and the attempt to recover them.They operate mainly in north Italy,they have been able to locate and find the rests of 23 WW2 planes and sometimes even the fallen crewmen.This post is about a story of such a crash.On Xmas day in december 1943 an american P 38 lighting fighter airplane on a mission from San Cesario airfield to Vienna was shot down and it buried itself together with its pilot 8 meters (around 25 ft) under the ground.Starting from what the old people were able to remember about that fact and what they found in local chronicles and war diaries,the members of this group began to make some on site researches.on october 4th 2008 they were able to excavate some large metal rests,part of a landing gear,some instruments from the cockpit panel,the bent barrel of a machine gun and some human rests but no dogtag.Some experts from JPAG from Hawaii came to Italy,and on october 10th 2011 they officially recognized the time date of the crash and the human rests as those of the pilot of the USAAF major Hugh Muse.His remains were buried after some weeks in his hometown,Menphis (Tennessee)where he was born on may 24 1920.

This saturday on the site of the crash a small ceremony will take place,it will be attended by the nephew of the pilot,by the USAF Embassy counselor from the american Embassy in Rome and the guard of honor from the 31st USAF flight group from Aviano. :salute:

This association mantains an internet page but (unfortunately) it's only in italian....anyway I paste the link for those who'd like to take a look at it anyway.

 

 

http://www.romagnaairfinders.com/Romagna_A...nders/Home.html

[SARGE]

A great story of the ongoing effort to find these remains. Thanks for sharing it.

[Jack's Son]

It is extremely gratifying to know that the people of Italy still remember our war dead, and continue to help in their recovery!

 

Thank you for posting this. :thumbsup: