Chapter 6 - RITTEN RESPONDS

On January 12, 2000 the team got its first real bite. Paolo Cagnan, investigative reporter for the Bolzano newspaper, Alto Adige, answered Kahler's plea for help and asked for more information. Kahler referred him directly to Diana and a lively exchange began. Also, the Bolzano tourism office passed along Graham's email to the Ritten tourist agency located in the plateau just northeast of Bolzano. That cooperative action proved to be a very fortuitous event. A major break! The Ritten tourist office responded with the following message:

January 15, 2000

Subject: AW: World War II history of Bolzano region

Dear Mr. Graham

I've received your massage and I can inform you that I've found lots of details about the crash of the US P-38. The exactly location of the crash is called Gebrack (a few hundred yards near to my house!!) - the exactly place is called Riggermoos near the Hotel Kematen in Ritten. (Tel of the Hotel 0039 0471 356356) or visit www.ritten.com I've found some subjects - in the year 1944 young boys. The name of this persons are: Dr. Bruno Hosp - today the regional culture dept. and he lives just in front of the incident place. He was 6 years old and he remembers a dead man with a parachute other victims werd scattered around the aircraft. …… Another person - he was a little bit older is Mr. Hans Frotscher - living in Riggermoos and he knows exactly the place where the bomber crashed down. This boys were one of the first persons they saw the crashed aircraft. If I could help you - please inform me - I'm very interested 'bout this fact.

Tourist Office Ritten

Peter Righi director --------------------------------------

A series of ecstatic messages ensued. The team was anxious to contact thewitnesses, but questions of protocol and language had to be worked out. The inference in the message that there were several victims 'scattered around the aircraft' was bothersome, but would be cleared up if messages could be exchanged with the witnesses. Jim immediately responded.

* SEE FIGURE 3 FOR OVERVIEW OF THE BOLZANO - SUDTIROL REGION

January 15, 2000

Dear Mr. Righi, You can't imagine how excited we are to receive your response! We are very pleased that you offer to assist us in knowing more about the circumstances of the crash that was witnessed. Is it possible that you could speak with Dr. Bruno Hosp and Mr. Hans Frotscher to determine if they would be willing to correspond or talk to Ms. Diana Dale, the niece of the lost pilot that is the subject of our search? We would be very interested to know if there might be any written records, photos of the crash site or victim and if there were items recovered from the crash or personal effects of the pilot. We are very interested, also, if there is any information about where the pilot's remains were taken. I am sure you can understand the great interest Ms Dale has about the incident. She is trying to bring a sense of closure to her 80 year old mother who has sought information about the loss for over 55 years. We gratefully thank you for your response and efforts. We will be in contact with you again as soon as Ms Dale is informed.

Sincerely, Jim Graham -----------------------------

The search team exchanged a rapid series of email messages discussing the new contact and the possibility that it might just be another false lead considering the report of multiple crash victims. In case that the aircraft which crashed in the Ritten area was a bomber instead of a P-38, the index of Missing Air Crew Reports was checked for bombers that were lost on October 20, 1944. There were four, including one B-17 , two B-24's and one B-25. The MACR's were requested from the National Archives. Another consideration was language. Since the reporter, Paolo Cagnan, was fluent in English, he was considered as a possible contact to query the two men in Ritten who had witnessed the crash. On the other hand, Paolo had informed the team in his early messages that the population of the area northeast of Bolzano was mostly German-speaking and the team was reluctant to expose the gentlemen to the publicity that might follow. Jim sent the following message to Mr. Righi, the Ritten tourism director.

-----Ursprungliche Nachricht-----

Von: Jim Graham [SMTP:jnmig@email.msn.com]

Gesendet am: Dienstag, 18. Januar 2000 03:08

An: T.V. RITTEN Cc: Stephen W Duncan; Dick Kahler; Dale, Diana Betreff:

Re: World War II history of Bolzano region

Attention Mr. Peter Righi--

Dear Mr. Righi, Ms Diana Dale has received a forwarded copy of your message of last Saturday and is very interested in contacting the two gentlemen who witnessed the crash you described. Do either or both of the gentlemen speak or write English? If not, we know of a fellow in Germany who we believe would be willing to act as an interpreter, and would likely be willing to converse with them by telephone to hear their recollections. Help to clarify details. We await your response.

Jim Graham ----------------------------------

The German predominance was evident in the header of the foregoing message which had been forwarded in Bolzano. The names of the two witnesses wereevidently German as well. Mr. Righi's reply gave relief when he pointed out that Mr. Hosp's wife could communicate in English.

January 21, 2000

Dear Mr. Graham! The two gentlemen Mr. Frotscher and Mr. Hosp don't speak English – but the wife of Mr. Hosp - Dr. Inga Hosp speaks it. You could contact her at the phone or fax Nr----- The German speaking fellow can contact me or Mrs. Hosp. PS: Pleas give me your post adress - so we can send you some images / maps and other touristic informations about RITTEN.

Bye

Peter Righi ---------------------------------

At last!---the team now had a person-to-person contact with a crash witness. Not only that—but with the ability to converse in English. Roland Geiger, the airwar researcher friend in Germany wouldn't be needed as a go-between. Jim shot off a message to Diana to initiate the contact.

January 21, 2000

Hi Diana--

Contact once again. I was beginning to wonder if we were spooked. You might consider contacting the wife of Mr. Hosp, --Dr. Inga Hosp via telephone to feel her out about pumping Mr. Hosp for his recall of the incident. You might be able to set up a rapport with her that would make her husband feel at ease. You saw Roland Geiger's willingness to participate. If you want to bring him into the picture, we will have to bring him up to speed on the whole background. Let me know if you want me to start the process. In the meantime, it might be good for us to scratch Peter Righi's itch to send us some tourism info. Hey, team! Send Mr. Righi your mailing address & express your interest in his beautiful area! We'll have to wait for another response from Paolo , the Italian Army & the state archives. I've sent for MACR's on the 15th AF bombers that were reported down in Italy on October 20, 1944 so we might eliminate some of the contenders as potential Bolzano fallout on that date. Awaiting your plan, Diana.

Jim -----------------------------------

Diana was reluctant to venture a phone call to Dr. Inga Hosp. She worried that a phone call would be too abrupt an introduction and that it would not allow her to adequately state the background to the search for her uncle Bill Wisner's crash site. Then she noted that the Hosp's had a FAX number, and decided to make the overture in written form. Diana quickly composed a single page FAX note and sent it off to Inga Hosp with a copy to Peter Righi to keep his role in the network visible. In the message, Diana posed a series of questions she would like Dr. Inga Hosp to query her husband, the real witness, about. Jim then set about collecting and scanning into the computer those critical documents (mission reports, MACR's and statements) that would be needed to thoroughly brief the team's contacts in Italy. Several Italian air historians were contacted and letters sent to Italian military organizations that might corroberate the crash site and witness accounts.

Paolo Cagnan, the investigative reporter in Bolzano was also very busyasking questions of the team to direct his search for information and possible witnesses of the October 1944 crash. He was digging into news archives, Italian military records and contacting local air war historians. All of the bureaucratic sources seemed to be dry wells. Jim studied the details of the Missing Air Crew Reports (MACR's) for each of the three P-38 pilots lost in the crash north of Bolzano to glean as much location detail as possible. The MACR for Virgil Olson was of particular interest because there was a German language report included. The report was a Luftwaffe record of the capture of Olson after he parachuted from the mid-air collision. It indicated that Olson survived and was transported to a Luftwaffe prison camp via the German interrogation center at Oberursel near Frankfurt. The MACR also had a notation that Olson was repatriated.

Jim emailed the scanned Luftwaffe report to Roland Geiger, the German air war historian for translation to English, hoping to get some detail of the location where Olson was captured. When digging through her grandmother's trunk that held all of her correspondence about the loss of son Bill, Diana found letters written after the war by Virgil Olson to her grandmother lamenting Bill's loss. Indeed, Olson had lived and returned to the U.S. Diana had tried to locate Olson via searches through the directories available on the Internet, but had not succeeded. Jim emailed John Mullins, the editor of the 1st Fighter Newsletter, to request the the membership of the 1st Fighter Association to try to find Olson and Anderson, the post mission statement author.

The request astounded Mullins. John was flying that October 1944 mission as a flight leader in the 94th Squadron and had recorded Olson as KIA in his history of the 1st Fighter Group, "An Escort of P-38's". John responded that he didn't understand how any of the three lost pilots could have survived. The 94th was somewhat lower and off to the side, but all that was seen was falling, burning debris and no parachutes were observed. About a week passed before Dr. Inga Hosp replied to Diana's FAXed query.

January 26, 2000

Diana wrote: "I just now received a fax from Dr. Inga Hosp. Rather than wait until tonight to scan it and risk a fuzzy copy, I'll just transcribe it here. It's short but very cordial."----

Dear Mrs. Dale, Thank you for your Fax letter. Certainly I am ready for helping you, but it will take some time for the research. After talking again with my husband who was only 6 years old when an American airplane crashed into the forest near Riggermoos/Ritten (which is called Renon by the Italians, but we are German speaking by mother language, like most of the peopl in South Tyrol, which belonged to Austria until 1918, as you may know) I will first talk to my husband's elder brother Josef (born 1934) who took along his younger brother to the wrecked plane. Then I will talk to Mr. Frotscher who grew up near that place and may know more than even my husband's brother. (My husband's family lived then two miles away from the place, in the village Klobenstein. Occasionally our house, where we live since 1974, is only 200 metres away from the place.) But most of all I want to talk to Mr. Ramoser (over 80 years old), who stayed at Ritten all the years throughout war (which is not so normal because most of the German speaking native people in South Tyrol had been expelled by the Italian Fascists). And after the war he had some official competences as a kind of mayor or so -- so that he could know perhaps something about the remainings, burial place, etc. So please be so kind to wait just one or two weeks. Then I'll come over with more news.

Best wishes and yours sincerely, Inga Hosp .

"It's going to be a long two weeks."

Diana ---------------------------------

At this point, the Bolzano newspaper reporter, Paolo was very active, gathering as much information as he could about the 1944 crash incident so that he could start a series of articles about the search in his Alto Adige newspaper. The team decided to alert Dr. Hosp to his activity, but did not inform Paolo of Inga's presence or information so that she could conduct her inquiry without any outside interference or publicity. The team continued to feed Paolo with as much data as possible. Email traffic was at a high pitch. Mr. Righi of the Ritten tourism agency sent some colorful brochures about the Ritten area and its attractions and accommodations. In the packet was a very informative pictorial map of the beautiful Tyrolian plateau & mountains. From the addresses that had been sent earlier for the Hosp family and the village where the 1944 crash occurred, the locale took on a new and highly visual quality.

At this same time, Geiger emailed his translation of the Luftwaffe report (KJUI-2323).

January 31, 2000

from:Rolgeiger@aol.com KJUI – 2323 …….this is the translated text:

formular 1a

Data about capture of a member of an enemy air force Office: Flieger Horst Kommandantur (Air Base Command)

location: Bosen; date: Oct 23, 1944 distribution: Kgf = Kriegsgefangenen = POW Weiterleitstelle = office responsible for leading POW from collection point to Stalag FLGK = (I don't know)

Auswertestelle West = Interrogation Center, Oberursel

Entwurf = sketch = where to be filed

name and first name: Virgil O. Olson, born Aug 27, 1915 rank: 1st Lt

residence before the war: unknown

serial number O-762394 T43 44 A (blood number and faith)

Location and exact time of downing (downing by whom, fighter plane, flak?) on Oct 20, 1944 about 12 o'clock in the Sarn Valley Alpenvorland = the area in front of the Alps (no English expression = no Alps outside Europe) not known who shot him down

Location and exact time of capture: in the Sarn Valley (Alpenvorland see above) on Oct 20, 1944 about 12 o'clock

Details about capture (crashed, bailed out, parachuted?): the pilot was salvaged from the wreck of his airplane (slightly wounded)

type of plane (exact sign of the fuselage): Lightning

Crew members (alive, dead, wounded, where do they stay): The pilot was salvaged slightly wounded.

Signature, Lt and taking-over officer

Tschüs

Roland -------------------------------