On 23 April Hans from Ummendorf near Biberach/Riss watched French tanks moving through his village. Three days before, Hans remembers a US bomber Marauder crashing near Appendorf. In the local newspaper "Schwaebische Zeitung" he recently reported about the time he went to school in the morning when there was an alarm, because of another box of bombers approaching. The Marauder attacked a freight train as the postman was at his home. Both quickly jumped inside the house as fighter air crafts were also around. Hans also remembers that men searched for crashed bombers taking away bits and pieces like an oil pump. This pump was later used by a local company as a standard solution to produce gang saws. The company still exists today andis a major player in this industry. Stefan.
Remember reading a paper on German aircraft salvage. In the early part of the war it was somewhat sporadic and haphazard (after all it was going to be a short war so no need to go to great efforts!). However once reality began to sink in Speer ordered a reorganisation of salvage on a Reich wide basis primarily to recover as much tonnage of specialised metals as possible. This was it appears quite thorough however I suspect that by April 1945 this was possibly getting a bit ragged and less salvage than scavenge.
