external_video
Hannes Trautloft's picture

This is an airshow in 1945, in USA, with many rare Nazi German WW2 planes and helicopters among others: Junkers Ju 290 bomber, Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter, Messerschmitt, Me 262 fighter, Messerschmitt Me 263 fighter, V2 rocket, etc.

Operation LUSTY (LUftwaffe Secret TechnologY) was the United States Army Air Forces effort to capture and evaluate German aeronautical technology during and after World War II. In the end, Operation Lusty collectors had acquired 16,280 items (6,200 tons) to be examined by intelligence personnel who selected 2,398 separate items for technical analysis. Forty-seven personnel were engaged in the identification, inspection and warehousing of captured foreign equipment.

The film is from Sept. 1945 at Freeman Field, U.S. captured aircraft test airfield. Once the military was done with these aircraft some were scrapped while most of them were moved into storage (1946-1950) at Orchard Field, Chicago which became O'Hare Airport. So it is possible some aircraft may have been scrapped and buried under present-day O'Hare Airport.  

Many of the captured aircraft were donated to the Smithsonian Museum and some still are in storage, and some are on loan to display at the US Air Force Museum in Dayton, OH. Not all examples were donated to the museum and were scrapped or donated to educational institutions, with a few survivors today.

They had hoped to find the remains of several planes missing from the roster of captured aircraft (Me-262, He-219, Do-335) but they only found discarded components in the excavated areas. Some were scrapped including the large Ju-290 that was scrapped in December 1946. An archaeology group is presently digging around Freeman Field to look for buried or scrapped aircraft to find some of the lost planes, but so far they have only found parts and not complete planes.

Source: 

Adalar Pakarinen (Youtube) | Wikipedia

WW2 Timeline: 

Nation in war: 

Language: 

No votes yet