Chapter 9 - DIANA SOLO's

In the six weeks of probing the Internet for some meaningful information source pertinent to the triple P-38 crash a half century ago, the team found itself blessed with an abundance of amazingly congenial, helpful, dedicated volunteers from the very lands which had been under attack by our air forces. Paolo Cagnan, the Alto Adige reporter; Christoph Mair, the student intern at the Sarntal tourist agency; Dr. Inga Hosp, the Ritten cultural affairs activist; and now Otto Grimminger, the Augsburg, Germany air war researcher were all uniquely qualified sources to help the team converge on its goal---the precise location of Bill Wisner's crash site and the recovery of actual artifacts from the crash which would conclusively identify his resting place long sought by his family. It was time for the team to organize its resources for a concerted, but orderly and well documented search in the Sarntal area. The team's volunteers had not met nor known of each other until the call for help came via the Internet. Hopefully, they could cooperatively bring the search to the desired conclusion. Up to this point the new volunteers had been unaware of each other's membership in the Wisner search team. It was time to get them acquainted with each other. Diana mailed a letter to Mr. Grimminger giving him the background and particulars of the search effort and forwarded Jim's correspondence with Christoph Mair to Inga. Jim cleared up a few points before leaving contact with the search team for the next two weeks.

February 14, 2000

Diana--

It sounds like Grimminger is a thorough researcher. He has most of the same archived materials on that mission that I have. I have all of the mission reports from the 1st Ftr. Gp. and the 71st Sqdn. as well as all of the MACR's for the pilots lost from the 1st/71st. He also must have personally dug for the German capture report on Olson as they have to be linked to the MACR. The key ingredient we need is the personal follow-up in the area, which we are trying to corral by email. It may be possible that he has visited the area previously and identified sites & records. I think rather than stir Bullock up to a high pitch yet, I think we should see what return you get from Grimminger and the residents in the Sarnvalley. I will send Bullock the summary of the mission & ask if he has done any research in the Sarntal area & indicate to him that we think we have some potential witnesses or area residents that are investigating. I would like to make contact with him for further search work as well.

Capt. Elliott was flying as #3 in Olson's flight & was hit by flak at the same time as Olson. He was able to make it back to Ancona, Italy the emergency base. He was killed in one of the last missions of the war on 15 Apr. 45. & went down just east of Munich. He was a Major then & our operations officer & a prince of a guy.

If you look at the graphic terrain map in the back of your Ritten tourist book, you can see the arrow to Sarntal at the left margin. I think the Sarnvalley is that crease to the right of Sarner Scharte & to the south. Mair said he would send us a map of the known crash sites. His boss at the tourist agency was also going to send a tourist brochure. I'd guess maybe 5+ km from Inga. I hope I can stay loosely connected while away from home. I, too, am anxious to see what develops.

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

Diana was now in the hot seat in the U. S. Email traffic kept rolling along.

February 15, 2000

Dear Diana,

Receiving your Mails this afternoon I was very much astonished about another local E-Mail address, contacted the tourist's association at Sarnthein, but Christoph Mair was already away. So I wrote him an E-Mail to his private address, asking to call me in the evening. In the meantime a friend in the Sarn valley did a research for me which proved the 3 crashes and the localizations. Christoph will look after the local details so that we do no double work. Is that o.k.? Until now we are rather sure only about Olson's way down from the crash point high up in the mountains down to the street where he seems to be taken as POW. It is a pity that we couldn't research some years earlier, because most of the eye witnesses now are dead. My friend has been said that one of the two victims was buried at the crash point, and that the other one died during the transport to the next village, Weißenbach. But who was who? Anyway: we won't give up.

Best regards

Inga -----------------------------

Diana followed up with Inga & Christoph.

February 15, 2000

Dear Inga,

I'm glad my messages got through all right. I'm happy to know you have made contact with Mair Christoph. I think he is an enthusiastic participant. I'm astounded that you now know of the exact locations of each crash site. Would it be possible for your friend to identify them on a detailed geographic map? I think Jim already knows where Virgil Olson's plane hit, but I'm pretty sure he didn't know the other two sites were identified. And your information about one pilot dying in the crash and one dying during transport is most important. I would love to hear more details of that, if you can get them.

Who was who, indeed? It will be good to find out what happened to the bodies of both of them. Is there some official record of what was done in those days? I'm sure the Germans have records somewhere, but did the local government keep any files? There was a search of the Bolzano area conducted by the U.S. in 1947 or 1948, but the report said that no crash sites were found. However, they did remove some bodies (14 of them, I think) from a cemetery in Mirandola. Is Mirandola near the Sarn Valley? (I'm familiar with the artist Pico della Mirandola, but I never knew where Mirandola was). If it is close, would that have been a logical place to bury unknown foreigners?

You're right; it is a shame we didn't do this years ago. My grandmother never gave up hope, but by 1950 she stopped writing the government and the embassies, having gained no more information. But I really don't think this would have been possible without today's Internet. It would have taken so long to get correspondence back and forth, the immediacy would be lost and enthusiasm would diminish. Every incorrect lead would have used too much time. With the Internet, a dead end is just a fork in the road that is easily corrected with little time wasted. I'm just hoping my mother stays in good health until we get some answers so I can tell her all about it. She and my father will be in Colorado for the summer at their mountain home. I would love to be able to tell them about this face to face.

Thank you, thank you for not giving up. I would give anything to be there to help. All my thanks,

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

Email exchanges between different time zones in the U.S. and in Europe took on a new complexity. The interchange became so rapid that it became difficult to determine the sequence and the relevance of one message to the next.

February 16, 2000

Dear Diana,

Until tomorrow, when the service man should arrive (today we got a lot of snow, so we postponed the visit up to our altitude of 1350m, half an hour from Bozen which is only 300 m above sea level) Christoph Mair called me from below (his place in the Sarn valley is on about 1000 m - all this to give you more orientation about our region), asking for an image of your uncle. Tomorrow I'll make another copy from the copy you sent me - and send it to him. You see, the chain is o.k. He told me to have made some interviews today and wanted also to know how tall your uncle was and the colour of his hair. From The image it looks somewhat dark. One of the downed dead Sarn valley Pilots is remembered as with read hair. Your uncle could have been the other one. Without being too optimistic: perhaps these informations could help. But I don't want to speculate. After he would have received the image and done more interviews I'll go down to his place and talk to him personally. And I'll gather picture postcards, a map and so on and send it to you. Kindly Inga -------------------------------------

February 16, 2000

Dear Mair,

Hello! I'm the woman who started this whole process of finding lost pilots, and my uncle was William O. Wisner. I'm so pleased you have joined the search. Thank you for your help. Dr. Inga Hosp emailed me a message saying you would like more information on the physical description of my uncle. I will attach a file with his photo to this message, so you can see for yourself. Of course, the photo is in black and white, but you can tell that he had dark hair. He was fairly tall, about 6 feet 1 inch (nearly two meters?), and had just turned 20 years old August 1, 1944. I think the other pilot, Lowell Twedt, had a lighter complexion and could very well have had red hair. I have his photo in my files and will scan it for you. He's wearing a hat on in the photo, so it is difficult to tell for certainty what color his hair was. Thank you again for your help. I can't express strongly enough how important it is to me.

My very best wishes, Diana Dale -----------------------------

Diana kept feeding email to Jim even though he would likely not see it for two weeks.

February 16, 2000

Jim, here's the latest from and to Inga. She and Mair have connected! I got a letter from one of the alpine clubs. It's in German, but between my hubby's rusty high school remnants and obvious context, we were able to determine that the information provided was about another pilot who went down in April 1944 named John Weiss. I scanned the letter, but the enclosures didn't scan right, so I'll re-do it and send it to you for your archives. He enclosed a map and a personal data sheet on Weiss. The data sheet confused me, though, because it has his 1960 marriage date on it, as well. Hope your trip was good.

D -----------------------------------------

* SEE FIGURE 4 FOR MAP OF THE SARNTAL SEARCH AREA