FLYBOYJ
"THE GREAT GAZOO"
Great work my friend!!!!!
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Great work my friend!!!!!While looking for the alloy with the code "L5 7513 22" I got that ..
View attachment 691086
So it looks like that's the aluminium alloy but not the steel one.
Look at the stringers shown in photo 2. They are zinc chromatedYes, for sure will post but takes time a little. Looks like there is no Zinc Chromate in and out.
Based on the part numbers identified, I don't think it's this wreckIt could be:
Douglas C-47B-35-DK Skytrain S/n 44-76945 (MSN 16529/33277)
delivered to USAAF 14 May 45;
delivered to Royal Air Force 14 May 45 as Dakota IV, serial KN624 at Dorval, Montreal;
Air Command, South East Asia 5 Jun 45;
No.300 Group 19 Jul 45, radio call sign VM-YCQ;
India 29 aug 46; RAF Communications Flight, RAF Mauripur, Pakistan 17 Dec 47;
Sold to Pakistan air Force 8 Jul 48 as H-709;
Arabian American airlines, Rome, Italy; Registered AP-AFK, cancelled 28 Oct 52;
To Jugoslovenski aerotransport (JaT) Mar 53, registered YU-ABK;
On January 8, 1968, the aircraft was operating a cargo flight from Munich, West Germany to Zagreb, Yugoslavia when it experienced problems with one of its two engines. The crew attempted to make an emergency landing at Linz airport in Austria but were forced to make a landing in a forest near Sankt Florian, Austria. all four crew members survived the accident but the aircraft was damaged beyond repair.
Note: Sankt Florian is about 13 km east of Hörsching airport and 6 km from the southern outskirts of Linz.
Based on the part numbers identified, I don't think it's this wreck
Freddy, we did discuss the Douglas inspection stamps in the beginning of this thread. It is quite possible that an inspector who was working the A-26 line got reassigned to the Douglas B-17 line (or C-47 line). I knew people who worked at Douglas during WW2 and this was not uncommon. The fact that you have an identifiable part number kind of solidifies the fact that it's probably a B-17 but my mind is still very open. It would be nice if we can attain more components from the site with visible part numbers.I had hypothesized that it could be the S / n 44-76945 on the basis of some details.
1) In the list of inspection stamps found in:
https://www.aviationarchaeology.com/downloads/aair_stamps.pdf
there are also other stamps that closely resemble the one shown in Emmerich's photo and which refer to the C-47. (See, for example, the attached image.)
Of course, in the example relating to the A-26, three digits and not four are shown inside the stamp, but nothing prevents similar stamps not being used, as well as on the A-26, also on other Douglas production aircraft. After all, the stamps in the Aviation Archeology list are just a few examples of those found in various crash sites but it is certainly not a complete list. I myself have found, on the crash site of a B-24, stamps not present in that list.
2) As already mentioned in another post, the A-26s have been rarely used by the 12th AF, starting from January 1945 and only in the Po Valley area and in any case only in Northern Italy.
From a search I did on Joe Bougher's lists, only one A-26 would have crashed in Austria.
The 44-35894 of the 7499th Support Squadron crashed on 31 Jul 52 near Innsbruck, Austria (all 4 survived).
3) The storage conditions of the sheets shown in the photos are very good, I would say excellent, with practically no signs of corrosion.
This would suggest they haven't been under the ground for too many years.
In my life I have seen many similar sheets found on various crash sites referable to the years from 1942 to 1945 and also from the first postwar period and I have never seen pieces in such a good state of conservation.
I'm sure that the plane crashed many years after the war ended and January 1968 could be a pretty plausible date.
Of course, this is not demonstrable at the moment unless Emmerich can accurately indicate the place of discovery or, better still, the geographical coordinates.
If these took us back to the Sankt Florian area then it would be much more likely that those pieces were part of that C-47 of the Jugoslovenski aerotransport (JaT).
View attachment 692312
HTH