Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Angus on March 31, 2009, 12:10:15 PM
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Hello all!
I am trying to track a loss of a Heinkel 111 from Norway in the spring (18 or 19th of march) of 1941.
The aircraft belonged to either KG 26 or 1.(F) 123 (Fernaufklarungsgruppe).
The word is that the aircraft was damaged by flak over Reykjavik Iceland and had to belly land some distance away. The crew escaped the country.
Here it becomes interesting. Captain is supposed to be Alexander Holle, a person of quite some renown. One of the passangers is thought to have been none less than Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the Abwehr!
Holle apparently had a He111 at his disposal, but lots about this deal seems to have been hushed down. Actually more, for I have yet to find a documented LW loss in Iceland, while there were several! (My next door neighbour has a piece from a FW Condor engine in the kitchen, just as an example, and my mother witnessed a chase where US fighters chased a German bomber to the sea. Much more around)
Anyway, I am trying to trace the loss, and find out more about Holle. It was a recce mission, as so many were, and Holle later had his fingers in the air raids on convoy PQ-17 that actually left from Iceland for Murmansk.
BTW, they are supposed to have flown from Sola airfield.
Anyone there from Norway that could lend a hand?
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Try digging around this site. At the bottom left corner you can search by year. If you cant find anything then email the webmaster and see if he can find out. If he runs this site he may have some info.
http://www.luftwaffe.no/
This is the he111 loss closest to your dates:
11.3.1941 Stab/KG 26 He 111 H-5 3655 1H+AA Off the west coast of Scotland F 100 % Missing (F) Olt. Rolf Alander MIA (Bo) Uffz. Peter Wähner KIA (Bf) Fw. Werner Meyer MIA (Bm) Fw. August Dether MIA
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I'l have a peek, but today I was actually there.
Will bring you some more data as I move on, this is quite an interesting case.
Oh, and Norway surrendered :D
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let me know what you find out. getting interested too
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I posted your message on 12'o'clock high forum. I am sure i will get a respond.
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Okay! Thank you :aok
BTW, this story was covered in a newspaper article up here in Iceland last weekend. But the author does not give his sources.
It was covered before, back in 1994, and I got slightly involved in the research some while later. The one who wrote the article back then (another one) is my eye-doctor. He happened to study in Munich, and one day he was approached by an elderly man, who told him of the event. That would have been Holle, but let's say I take everything with a grain of salt untill I have some proof.
After all, Canaris on the go in Iceland's south, and being spirited away with pro-German Icelanders is even today a very inflammable matter!
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Angus, I got a reply back. Looks like a dead end.
Hello OakTree.
This story seems everlasting. I am familiar with the author of the first written article (appearing in local newspaper decades ago) and asked him many times onto specific details. There are however many problems with this case: No un-indentified He 111 wreck has ever been found - the area is now well travelled and only about 15 km from Reykjavik. I think I have found and recorded all wreckes there that can be found in that given area and been to most of the places (others have been to the others and all are well documented). No known report of any flight SEEN on that date(s) - save one unindentifed heard off the South coast (but that could well have been British - well it had to be seen or heard - if it was fired at and no firing was recorded - or is known to me at least). No known loss for this unit (KG 26) on these dates. Losses for that period are well documented and none is actually listed on these dates. And the purpose of the flight has not come to light. There were several German flights over Reykjavik City, both before and after, (and all of these were seem by many, many witnesses besides the British Army / RAF guarding the area) and no tactical or strategic changes had ocurred in the meantime. So was this flight made? I have no evidence on any part of this story actually happening.
Besides, this topic has been discussed here before and my answer remains the same. No actual hard evidence has come to light, and in my opinion this may well not be a true story.
Best regards.
ed
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Thanks.
That's also why I remain sceptic, for the last article sports bold statements and no backup.
There are however some items that I find curious.
- I have been on the hunt for many LW losses, and the only thing I found out is that the reports are yet incomplete, and not always accurate.
- Looking for this aircraft, years back, I browsed all the loss lists from Norway I could find. (I will do so again). I found NO loss over Iceland, and that is something that is incorrect.
I will contact the older author about this (the one who met Holle) in some days, as well as making inquiries about the newer one. Maybe he's just potty, maybe he is chuckling over the whole deal with plenty of data in his drawer.
Interesting case non the less. BTW the former author did find some parts from a crash in a likely position, but nothing that could be identified. The guy is actually a very active outdoors-man, and has gained some renown for discovering a beatiful cavern in that area. Maybe a result of looking for the aircraft, you never know....
I'll take some time to translate the log of events anyway, it does have some data....
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Good luck. I hope that you get something out of it. Finding any LW crash sit would be rewarding.
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Ok here is the claimed sequence of events:
Prologue: An old German on a hospital in Munchen approaches an Icelandic medical student which was there, and tells him the rough story. He sais "this is a part of your nation's history, and it must be allright if I tell you after such a long time". The German died soon after.
The trip:
Takeoff from Sola airfield near lunchtime on the 19th of March 1941 in a long-range He111 (12 hrs).
Crew of 4, Holle, Canaris, the navigator and the radio operator.
The aircraft gets hit by flak over Reykjavik and crash-lands at roughly 4:15 which I presume is 16:15 which gives it some 4-5 hrs of flight time on the rough 1000 km leg. Would that fit? Guess so.
The crew torched the aircraft.
A message is sent to a "contact" in Hella, a town some 60 miles further to the east, as well as to a hip in the harbour of Heymaey, an island of the south coast.
One crewmember gets injured, so they split up. 2 of them head for Reykjavik (with the injured one), while the other 2 (Holle & Canaris) head straight east for a long walk.
The former were spirited on board a ship in Reykjavik harbour, while the latter were picked up by a "friendly" and driven & walked to Hella. (The British had sentries on some bridges, but showing papers was not mandatory). It takes them 4 days to reach the southern coast, where they stal a bot and make it to the ship.
The ships in question were namedMS Edda and S/S Spica, codenamed Juan Fernandes/Shiff 28. That one sailed to Reykjavik, where the crew unites on board M/S Edda. The author claims he has a witness who saw the transfer.
Edda departs for Spain (fish export). It gets stopped by the submarine U-98, which takes the fugitives to France. 23 days had passed. (U-98 was actually landing in France on the 14th of April, so the time and location fits)
Further claims:
Holle had 2 long-ranged He-111 at his disposal.
The wreck was swiftly removed by the Reykjavik chief of police. Now there was a character worthy of a riddle, and he later claimed that if he was to open up about police ops in Reykjavik in the war-years, it would be on par with the finest Bond stories. I have been reading into operations right before the outbreak of the war, and it is already quite something!!!!
There are many missing parts here, but something to start with. Holle's location and time of death fit. He did have at least one He-111 at his disposal. The ships involved did carry the codenames he wrote down for the baffled young Icelander. Some ships did have "deals" with the German subs. Oh, and Heinkels came here on frequent occations for Recce (convoys) and that is exactly what Holle got involved with. Some of those got shot up, or perished for other reasons, but the loss reports are very foggy. There are still un-identified wrecks in many locations of the country.
The famous PQ-17 sailed from "Hvalfjörður, Iceland" and was later attacked by Holle's bombers, the recce part was about logging in the date of departure and preferably convoy size.
But what the devil was Canaris doing? This is a very risky mission for the head of the secret service! However, he had turned his back on Hitler....