Steetview A house seen on Streetview that is somewhat similar. View in opposite direction down the street: Regards ...
CN 45 at Achiet Emplaning Chalk 45 at Achiet Airfield for Op Varsity. Originally from the Critical Past site but also on Youtube somewhere. HD Stock Video Footage - 1st Allied Airborne Army troops land in Germany during Operation Varsity in World War II. A thought - Why don't we see something of the Squadron number/code on the front of fuselage in the Paradata photo? Burnt off maybe? Regards ...
I thought the front of the fuselage. But could be wrong as seen in next post. Regards ... Edit - removed compare to avoid confusion
Yo, Just ran across this pic which is confusing me, but suspect it could be as alberk believes ... ? Eats hat ... Regard ...
Wing Door? I may still have this wrong? I didn't realize there was a larger window or semi-door (?) over the wing on the C-46. That would have amounted to considerable front end fuselage destruction as seen in the Xanten crash. Is there accord with the Capt. Bryant account? (Trick question ... ) Regards ...
The C-46 when it caught fire did seem to burn and melt quite well as seen is this image of C-46 44-77641 that caught fire at Achiet Le Grand when the crew chief was pre flighting the aircraft when a fire began in the exhaust and the ground crew were unable to put the fire out before the fire took hold on the rest of the aircraft. As you can see behind the officer posing with the remains of the engine that caught fire there is nothing that remains of the forward fuselage
Hah - I won't be tricked... I think that Bryant's account is very valuable. It is in accordance with what we see in the IWM footage - tail thrown clear. And with the "Q" call sign we could make out on the tail. Bryant surely would have noticed had 44-77637 crashed near the cathedral and the rubble of Xante. And would have said so. Instead, he says vicinity of Bönninghardt i.e. a bit further west of the Rhine than Xanten. Bönninghardt is both a hamlet and also the name of a wooded ridge in its vicinity.
Bryant calls Bonninghardt an "approximate location". He didn't know where he was when he witnesses the crash as proven by the den Brok photo which was obviously taken at Xanten. Should I bore everyone with more proof? Regards ...
I don't understand why, at this late date, the USAAF would consider using aircraft without self-sealing fuel tanks, anywhere near the smell of gunpowder. Especially a slow-moving transport that was not manueverable, had no defensive weapons, and was required to hold formation to drop paratroopers. The Curtiss company had already gone through this with the P-40, which was duly modified with self-sealing tanks several years earlier. Lining the fuel cells with self-sealing material was no guarantee of safety, but could delay the spread of fire and give the crew more time to bale out or find a place to attempt a wheels-up landing. It was known in advance that the Wesel area would be a hot landing zone. The expectant heavy concentration of anti-aircraft fire is one reason why the U.S. Army pathfinder teams were not dropped in advance as usual, because that was considered to be a suicide mission. I'm tempted to blame General Lewis Brereton for committing the C-46 to combat without self-sealing tanks, but I cannot be sure of what happened until I know how General Paul Williams weighed in. Paul L. Williams (general) - Wikipedia Self-sealing fuel tank - Wikipedia
The Erprather Weg Houses - Xanten Another attempt to prove a Xanten location for the den Brok photo. Below is a comparison of a portion of the photo showing the seven or more closely spaced buildings on the northwest side of Erprather Weg with an aerial crop of the Xanten area as originally posted by alberk. The two red arrows point out the first tall house and the sixth (?) a little farther south. That is a unique collection of structures that would be hard to find in a similar arrangement elsewhere. A few of the buildings may have contained two households. The marked lane was probably used for access purposes and still exists today as a footpath. Streetview, I believe, shows that many of the houses still exist. 9 Erprather Weg is probably the "tall" house. It appears to be an older building and would no doubt have undergone renovation since 1945. See its location in the satellite below. Others: For myself there is just no denying that the den Brok pic was taken in Xanten and consequently the Sgt. Chitham IWM footage which also shows the same C-46 tail section. Regards ...
Why would it "obviously" have been taken at Xanten? I do not quite understand what is obvious in the photo other that it shows the tail section with a "Q" - with a rather indistinct background.
Yo, Well I tried to prove my point and not surprisingly it didn't convince everyone. Who knows it could very well be another one of my boondoggles. Perhaps we should send Joop over to Bonninghardt on his motorbike with the den Brok pic to see if he can find the location. He could drive around asking the locals ... Regards ...
Movement Table Chalk 45 would have been one of the 513th PIR Regimental HQ aircraft (CNs 43-51) in Serial A-6. Regiment CO, Colonel Coutts, was on Chalk 43. Not sure what aircraft pilot Bryant was flying? Regards ...
Treeline Here's a treeline possibility. It would have been located along the lane at field's end which was also used to access this area of the crash site. Tail section and fuselage locations are close but not exact. The implication here is that the IWM footage was indeed shot at Xanten as claimed and consequently the den Brok photo also. Unmarked aerial crop: Regards ...
I did get the scan of the photo posted by Nightdriver approx. a decade ago. Back then I searched for an answer on the location. From a 2012 email from a guy in Germany (named Jurgen): the area looked familiar to him, thinking of this, 51 34 55 N / 6 26 03 E and look at it from North East. However, no C-47 crash (we talked about C-47 instead of C-46) was known to him. A P-51 had crashed in the area in 1944. He knew about three C-47 crashed in the Bonninghard area (from the East of Sonsbeck to the old blacksmith at Kamp-Lintfort-Vierquartieren) one of those would have landed at Bonninghardt airstrip he thought the photo might have been taken "a field area East to South-East of Sonsbeck" Sadly, I don't have a better version. I need to look for who provided that scan some 10-14 years ago.
Hi, Where is this: 51 34 55 N / 6 26 03 E I have made a few attempts to prove the Nightdriver/den Brok photo and the IWM footage was shot at Xanten, but unfortunately people just can't see it. Like I said previously all photos and footage dealt with in this thread are of the same C-46 aircraft that crashed at Xanten - Chalk 45. It's game over mates unless you can come up with something better and more compelling. Regards ...
In 2016, This website, by archive.org. Another investigation. From Capt Bryand certificate (report) On crossing the Rhine I sighted a C-46D type aircraft with the left wing on fire behind the gas tank. I put on power to catch up with the aircraft to call the pilot over the VHF to tell him he was on fire. As I was catching up with the aircraft the pilot started down in a slow glider as if preparing to crash land. Instead of putting the aircraft down straight ahead, the pilot started a low turn at what seemed to be a slow air-speed. When the aircraft went into the turn the fire spread to the extreme end of the left wing, burning the aileron off almost immediately. Unable to straighten the aircraft out the left wing struck the ground followed by the nose and then the right wing. The aircraft then exploded and the tail section was thrown clear of the wreckage.
Not much new there but does contain a photo of Lt. Henderson who I doubt very much came upon the crash of Chalk 45. Regards ...
