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Buntes Mustang - Warning Long!

Posted by Indiana Tony on Sun Sep 09, 2001 11:34:57 AM

In reply top Re: Who says there's nothing in Berlin lakes? posted by Paul McMillan on Sun Sep 09, 2001 08:11:15 AM

Is this the same Mustang described in Roger Freemans "Mighty eighth war diary"?

From what I remember, the pilot stated that he came off shooting up an airfield, felt a bang looked down, cockpit full of flames, zip on the altimeter, airspeed at about 150, fan up front stopped, (usual depressing chain of events)loked ahead, and hallejulah.. a lake. Now, the chain of events, was very quick. Strafe > pullup>bang> nosedown> ditch , at about, according to him, 100 miles per hour.

"One, Allen Bunte, managed to avoid being blown apart by flak, burning to death in the aircraft, and smashing up on impact and drowning all in a matter of minutes! Strafing an airfield, his Mustang was hit by heavy flak and burst into flames. Too low to bail out, he cast around for a possible landing site, spotted a lake, and made a dive for it. The water put the fire out, but the impact knocked Bunte out, too! His luck hadn?t quite deserted him,.though. The shock of immersion in the cold water brought him round, and his oxygen mask kept him going long enough to escape from the cockpit and inflate his life jacket before passing out again." ref....

http://www.obrien.mersinet.co.uk/targetgerm3.htm


Bunte, the stringy, clownish Floridian, flying in Beeson's squadron, thought it was flak that caused his plane to begin heating up as he pulled off a smoking drome. Not until after the war did he learn from "Monty" Montgomery, who was flying behind him, that the damage was caused when his plane hit a high-tension wire.

Fire gushed from the Mustang. Bunte, who once ended an official combat report with, "I claim one Me. 109 destroyed and one hell of a lot of intrepidity", was on the point of burning up in his cockpit when he saw the lake near Potsdam, on the outskirts of Berlin. Bunte dived the plane into the lake and fellow-flyers saw the red nose of the Mustang plummet into the water, carrying Bunte. The tail section disappeared.

"God he's had it!" a pilot gasped.

The impact of the plane on the water knocked Bunte unconcious. Strapped in the cockpit, Bunte sank with the craft. Under the water Bunte struggled with his daze. He tugged and pulled to get out of his chute harness instead of undoing the safety belt, which was what held him prisoner in the water. Bunte passed out again and somehow--he never knew exactly--he floated to the surface.

Sputtering, his long black hair glistening with blood, Bunte pulled the string to inflate the rubber dinghy. He got one side inflated, but there wasn't enough strength left in his stringy arms to inflate the other side.

But there was a tree growing in the water a few yards away. "Old J. C. himself must have put that tree there for me to grab," Bunte advised me after the war. (important, if the tree is still there, and not used for firewood in the winter of 46)home.earthlink.net/~johnrlove/1000_destroyed/chptr14.html

He staggered to the beach and collapsed. He wearily lifted his throbbing head to see some German civilians approaching. But even in his fright of them, Bunte was too exhausted to do more than pant.

To his surprise, the Germans wrapped him in a blanket, gave him a precious cigaret, placed him in a wagon and delivered him to a Luftwaffe airdrome.


http://www.multimap.com/map/browse.cgi?scale=200000&overviewmap=w3&coordsys=mercator&X=1450000.91339786&Y=6850000.45155472&gride=&gridn=&width=700&height=400&client=europe&db=w3&down.x=20&down.y=19

(map reference)

http://www.kondruss.com/mad/De6.gif airfield overlay map of the area.

The largest lake that borders Potsdam is the Heliger See

So, if its the same aircraft, semi intact is right. But this pilot says he was able to swim to shore, "by an old man and some beach huts" So, its possible. However, something else everyone has forgotten.

We are talking about the Soviet zone of occupation, even now Germany is still trying to clean it's lakes up, of all the crap dumped in them in the soviet area, including phosphates, chemicals, rubble etc. i received an e-mail this morning, from a Tauchsporter in the area..... part of it as follows....

"In the most lakes the visibility is much to bad for diving. So if there
really is an airplane on the ground, you would not find it. An other
problem: the bottom in most lakes is not very strong.
(i do not know the english word for this kind of bottom: its mostly
black and feels like slime or pudding (not sand, stones or reef :-))
so the plane should be sunken in the years into the underground" -Matthes Uhlmann 9/9/01

So , apart from the forest mulch that inhabits most "wald" lakes and the phosphates crap, you are going to need a towfish to find it, that's if the lake in question, doesn't have an awful lot of berlin rubble in it.In this case, i would make the deposition, that we are looking at a "forest" lake hence the tree growing out of it.

But , anything is possible, there are 12 lakes in the area, of any note, does anyone know the airfield Bunte (or this other pilot) was hosing over at the time?

Regards Tony :0)




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