After a co-worker of mine (Michel Truszkowski) started talking with his neigbour,  World War 2 came up.  The neighbour reminded when he was a little kid, a plane carsh in Testelt on 17/08/1943. This happend on 500 meters of his elderly home in the Weefberg, Testelt.

When Michel told me about the crash, we immidietly started looking for all the neccesary information.

Also thanks to Jhonny Janse and Chris Van Kerckhoven we came to the conclusion that it had to be B-17 "Patches" from the 8th AIR FORCE 30 B.G. 365 SQ.

The B-17 site was already know,  and there was told that we would not find much anymore of the plane.

On a sunny 16 Julie 2006 we deceided to make an attempt to find the plane. After a whole afernoon of intense searching we did not find anything.

Beneath the Weefberg, there were  two older men, enyoing the sun.  I asked them of the by any chance knew anything about the crash.

Both gentelmen starting telling stories like it all happend yesterday. Afer more then an hour listinging to their intresting stories they pointed out the exact place of the crash plane,  or what would be left of it since it exploded before hitting the ground.

With new courauge we started the detecting again, and after a very short while we found the first pieces of allinium on a depth of 20 cm. At the same spot we receoved some electric wiring and the most important, the ID tag.

Because it was getting late, we deceiced to abort the recovery.

After doing some research we found out that the pieces came from the back of the engines.

Because i not yet have recoverd much parts of the B17, there are some photo's of the

”Schweinfurt Raid ” from  17/08/’43 included with the photo's from  ”Patches ”.

Benny Ceulaers

Many thanks to Michel Truzskowski , Jhonny Janse ,Chris Van Kerckhoven and all other eye-witnesses  in Testelt.