A check in Hangar 5 revealed progress with the Wellington turret. Now mounted on a display rig, it is almost complete. The glider towing mods are visible on the surviving fuselage structure:

Oh, to combine that with this!

Here is the Me 262 in 1963 at the Dunnotar airbase before it was moved to the museum. The current finish (4th.) is pattern wise very far removed from the original.

Yes, definetly not a Luftwaffe scheme. It looks like it was copied from a piece of German armor as the current cam scheme was normal for Panzers in Sicily and Italy.

Now it’s just a simple matter of narrowing the list down to those Halifax’s lost in this area…

EB212 (Known to have crashed in the Baltic)
EB246
EB274

DG245

DK230 (Known to have crashed in the Baltic in the same raid as EB212)
DK267 (Known to have crashed landed in Sweden, so not likely.)

LK635 (unlikely)
LK666 (unlikely)
LK702
LK709
LK729
LK891
LK916
LK971

I would suggest ‘212 is the most promising candidate as it was lost on a raid against Peenmunde and is known to have crashed into the Baltic east of Moens Klint, although that would still be about 30kms south of your wreck site, Lasse. The difficulty is crews attacking targets in Denmark, North Germany and the Baltic coast were routinely instructed to make for Sweden in the event of damage that made it unlikely for them to get back over the North Sea.

If you look in the “Big book of Spitfires” I believe a mkV crashed at Crays Hill however I can’t remember the ID, and there are 60 pages of mkV’s to go through; wont be much left now, what with all them pikeys…..

That would be P8799, (I’d be very weary of assuming a connection though!)

The Spitfire Production website has this to say about her:

P8799 Mk. Vb, Built at Castle Bromwich. Engine: Merlin 45

….and last entry: Engine failed, hit trees in force-landing. Crays Hill, Essex. Cat. E damage, 13-11-44

As Bruce says, theres no possible way to identify the specific aircraft it came from and even less to find out how it got to where it was. All I can say is that Crays Hill is only about a dozen miles from two wartime fighter airfields; Hornchurch and North Weald.

Secondly, it’s a later type Spitfire canopy, so 1942ish onwards.

Is the bare airframe that was in the Yugo Air Force Museum still there?

(Edit: The one in Zagreb not Belgrade.)

Edit 2: The best google nets me is a tail section in the Croatian Technical Museum but I don’t know if its the same one. Anybody know more?

Thanks I am amazed its from something so modern I never knew they used plywood in US Fighters do you have a picture of the P47 seat ?

Thanks again

Sorry, Graham no. Nothing in my collection that really shows off the seat. Fat-arsed pilots in the way, usually. A google hunt might turn something up.

Is it not also a designated war grave?

Not sure. The crew’s remains were recovered and they were buried nearby but the location was lost, so they only have Runnymede entries, AFAIK. There was interest from the relatives in trying to find them at one point but I heard nothing more.

I seem to recall the government were trying to sell the land around it a few years ago and there was very tight restrictions on the wreck site associated with the sale, but again I don’t know how it turned out.

A search of WiX or here will probably turn up more details.