From a USA fighter crash site

[salerno1943]

This crash site we can find with help of a old man that was a child when aircraft go down.

It is crashed about 15 km sout east of Salerno, september 1943.

The old man said us that he seen a USA and a German aircraft fought in the sky. Then the USA aircraft go very near to the ground and take a steel cable put in the valley and crashed. He remember that there was at least a dead body from the aircraft. Actually we have not other informations.

Here are the fragments after a first reconnaissance. Some idea about aircraft type??

This appear to be a cover. Colour grey or blue\grey. Measure 17x11 cm. Number 56 painted



Rear. Yellow.



Code 89C222 4 5



Code S9085



Fragment of fuselage. Colour grey\blu covered with colour yellow.



Fragment of alluminium.



Code 931 631 66....



Code circled R 199



Code circled M



Small fragments



Bullets of 12,7 mm



All marked S L 43



We are not sure these object we find in crash site are from aircraft. Some idea about black plastic object?

[Dan K]

Code 89C222 4 5

P-47D ?

http://www.aviationarchaeology.com/src/partaircraft.htm

[salerno1943]

Thanks. Do you have info about P-47 crashed around Salerno???

[Dan K]

The P-47D was just a guess based on one of the parts numbers. There's a problem with the date, as the first P-47D's didn't arrive in the MTO until late September 1943, and didn't fly first combat sweeps until December. If the witness is sure the plane crashed in September, then I doubt it was a Thunderbolt.

[Steve Nelson]

Just tossing my .02 in here. That mangled fuselage panel appears to be primed in Zinc Chromate Yellow, with a Neutral Gray finish coat..which was standard paint procedure on the P-47.

SN

[bipe215]

Aviation Archaelogy only list two crashes in Italy for Sept 43. Both are P-40F's. One was in Paesum which is about 24 miles southeast of Salerno. The other is northwest in Castello.

http://www.aviationarchaeology.com/src/ ... p1943O.htm

Steve

[Mike]

?............Zinc Chromate Yellow, with a Neutral Gray finish coat..which was standard paint procedure on the P-47.

.......and on pretty much every other USAAF combat aircraft in Europe in this the era