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The main pilot,Cody,was a US hero,due to when the airship Hindenburg crashed,he ran out of the throng of people watching and saved people from the burning carcass of the ship.
He received a medal,and got a person 'thank you' from Herman Goering.
So for that reason,i think the AWOL suggestion as a possibility,is wrong,they had no reason to abscond, and that is certainly not in Cody's nature.
Out of all of the theories I sifted through, the one that seemed most plausible to me is they both died during the inspection of the oil slick: one, or both, fell as a result of that faulty door latch, or perhaps one merely fell and the other fell while trying to save him. I like to think in the most realistic and plausible manner with theories like this, but the thought that they ran into an enemy fighter is intriguing. Simultaneously, if that occurred, how would they have acquired both men without damaging L8 AND have it safely pilot back to California? My money is on them both perishing at sea.
I'm equally curious about the reports of seeing someone parachuting. Surely if one (or both) had made it back and parachuted out, they would've contacted someone...unless they died on impact, but even then, surely someone would've found their bodies eventually.
Good points.
The parachute theory was debunked though,due to both parachutes still being locked in their position on board when found.
The calculated the time that 'something' happened was the hour between 07:50-08:50 am,they last radioed into base at 07:42.
This is interesting also,regarding them falling overboard :
'The crews of two fishing vessels which were in the area of the observed oil slick later testified to the board that they saw the airship descend down to 300 above the ocean's surface and circle the oil slick. Expecting depth charges to be dropped upon it, they brought up their fish nets and steered clear of the anticipated detonations. However, no depth charges were dropped, and the blimp rose skyward into the clouds. At no time did either crew witness anything fall or drop from the airship.'
It could have been an even bigger situation if that depth charge that fell from the airship onto the golf course went off !!
Or if the fuel line ruptured whenever it finally crashed into that telephone pole. Now that I'm thinking on older mysteries surrounding parachutes (although debunked), I can't help but think of D.B. Cooper.
Indeed..or the disappearance of Glenn Miller in 1944.
That is odd...did they know how he died ?
Chemicals maybe ?
Said they didn't find anything or any signs of it being a heart attack or heat exhaustion or anything like that, nor could they find any reason for him/them being in hazmat suits. I'm imaging the plot twist: some crazy experimental government bunker was just yards away and the investigators and detectives had no clue. Would make for a fun film!
That's the way I was thinking too.
I wonder if the story was ever updated.
Was it in war-time ?
So annoying when that happens.
No, I'm talking about a separate 'disaster mystery' type incident I read about years ago and can find no trace of now.
Fishing crews first steering away and then claim they didn't see anyone fall doesn't mean none did. They probably fell, which would send de blimp up. unmanned blimps don't go madly around so anyone passing by would think it was occupied. as swimming is rather difficult in oil, if one fell out the other probably tried to safe him. Pity the fishing boats didn't go and check. Or the navy......
That's a possibility.
I think If there was only 1 crew and they didn't see anything then ok,but the fact that there were 2 separate boats and both crews didn't see anything makes me wonder.
USS Lexington discovered by billionaire Paul Allen's crew 76 years after WWII sinking .
Billionaire Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder and Seattle Seahawks owner, has made another huge nautical find: the USS Lexington, which was lost at the Battle of Coral Sea 76 years ago.
The fleet aircraft carrier, the first to be sunk by opposing carrier aircraft in World War II, was found near Australia below Coral Sea in a remarkably well-preserved condition, news.com.au reported.
The expedition crew of Allen’s personal research ship R/V Petrel found the missing Lexington two miles below and about 500 miles off the eastern coast of Australia, according to USNI News.
“To pay tribute to the USS Lexington and the brave men that served on her is an honour,” Paul Allen said on his website. “As Americans, all of us owe a debt of gratitude to everyone who served and who continue to serve our country for their courage, persistence and sacrifice.”
As the Lexington was struck by multiple Japanese torpedoes and bombs on May 8, 1942, more than 200 Lexington sailors were killed in the fight, and nearby US ships rescued 2,770 of the carrier’s remaining sailors, according to the Navy Times.
Once evacuated, the ship, affectionately known as “Lady Lex,” was torpedoed by the USS Phelps to prevent her capture, according to the Navy Times.
Commander of US Pacific Command Admiral Harry B Harris Jr told Fox News about his gratitude of the find: “We honour the valour and sacrifice of the ‘Lady Lex’s’ sailors — all, all those Americans who fought in World War II — by continuing to secure the freedoms they won for all of us.”
Harris’ father was one of the sailors evacuated.
“Our Navy’s strength comes from those who have gone before. This is our heritage. Our Navy’s strength comes from those who serve now. This is who we are. No one should doubt that today’s warriors are ready to fight tonight and win,” he told Fox News on Monday.
Harris, who oversees 375,000 military personnel and is responsible for threats to the US across 100 million square miles — half of the earth’s surface — is currently in Australia “to meet with my counterparts and reinforce our amazing alliance.”
He added: “Alongside our allies, friends and partners, bound together by shared values, the United States is committed to maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific, which has brought security and economic prosperity to all who live in this critical region.”
At least he is using his money positively,indeed !
A man known as the "Bookkeeper of Auschwitz" has died at the age of 96 - shortly before he was due to begin a four-year prison sentence.
Oskar Groening was convicted in 2015 of being an accessory to the murder of 300,000 Jews at the Nazi concentration camp in occupied Poland during the Second World War.
German prosecutor Kathrin Soefker said he died in hospital on Friday.
The former SS guard said during his trial that he oversaw the collection of belongings from those killed at Auschwitz or used as slave labour.
He then ensured that valuables and cash were separated to be sent to Berlin.
There were several occasions when he was assigned to "ramp duty", which involved processing new arrivals.
But while he admitted witnessing individual atrocities, he did not acknowledge participating in any crimes.
He acknowledged "moral guilt" and said he was "very sorry" for his actions.
"No one should have taken part in Auschwitz," he said.
"I know that. I sincerely regret not having lived up to this realisation earlier and more consistently."
Of the camp's 6,500 SS personnel who survived the war, fewer than 50 were convicted.
Groening was pursued through the courts following a landmark case that allowed prosecution for aiding and abetting the Nazis.
His case followed the conviction of former concentration camp guard John Demjanjuk, who was sentenced because he had served at the Sobibor camp in occupied Poland - rather than for crimes he was known to have committed.
A court doctor had decided that Groening was able to serve his sentence, providing he was given appropriate nursing and medical care.
Germany's constitutional court rejected an argument in late December that imprisonment at such an advanced age would violate his "right to life".
In a last-ditch bid to avoid jail, a formal "request for mercy" was filed in January.
German news magazine Der Spiegel said there had been no formal response at the time of Groening's death.
74 years later, a pilot who crashed in France returns home.
BUYSSCHEURE, France — It is early afternoon on a spring day in 1944. On a French farm 20 miles from the English Channel, two young brothers tend the cows — perhaps they goof off a bit — as their father brews beer.
Then a plane falls from the sky.
A P-47 Thunderbolt, an American fighter plane, has been hit by German fire. On the ground, the boys watch as the last moments of a desperate American pilot unfold.
"When the plane fell, there were still bullets exploding" from the plane's .50-caliber machines guns, recalls Marc Cooche. He was 12 then; at 86, he's still haunted by memories of that afternoon.
In Cooche's recollection, the plane veered to avoid some electric cables, maneuvering in the air for two or three minutes before plummeting nose first. The crash left a deep crater in a field of beets. Flames fed by the plane's fuel licked the sky, and the hole burned for days.
The boys and their father wanted to rescue the pilot. Cooche's father "came with horses and barrels of water to put out the fire," he says, but Germans had arrived at the site and turned him away.
In a world war, the loss of a single plane and its 22-year-old pilot, Lt. Frank Fazekas, in rural France drew scant attention. A little more than a week later, just a few miles away, the Allies would launch the largest seaborne invasion in history. Less than a year later, the Nazis surrendered.
Over time, the pit in the field was filled with brick, dead livestock, aluminum and ceramic roofing tiles. Dirt blanketed the makeshift grave, so the farmers could plant again.
A couple years later, a British team looking for their missing found aircraft parts and alerted American authorities. Americans visited the site and deemed the plane and remains "non-recoverable." The wreckage was mangled and burned, leaving little to compare to dental records or fingerprints.
Crops grew. Train tracks were laid, 100 yards away. A road moved. Mayors changed. Some of the land, including the crash site, eventually ended up in the hands of a neighbor.
Cooche stayed on the land, started a construction business and had children. But he never forgot about the pilot and his plane. He's not the only one.
___
Frank Fazekas Jr. never knew his father. He was just 6 months old at the time of his crash, living with his mother in a tight-knit Hungarian community in Trenton, New Jersey.
He recalls how his dad's younger brother, John, "would tell me how my father never studied, got straight A's in school. He was very talented. He taught himself to play the violin."
Fazekas Jr. would spend summers at his great aunt and uncle's house. He would climb up to the attic and pore over letters written between his mother and father. Barely a senior himself, his father referred to his son as "Junior."
The son would focus on his father's signature. "I would practice signing my name like he did," he says.
In school, a teacher told him that he pledged allegiance to the flag differently — with more intent — than other kids did.
Because his dad flew, he loved airplanes. He got a degree in aeronautical engineering and became an Air Force pilot in the Vietnam War. He later worked with Department of Defense contractors and now, at 74, he's in his third career as a tour business owner in New Hartford, New York.
"For a lot of years I felt like I was trying to complete something for him ... the whole aviation thing, the flying, it was all cut short, I mean so abruptly at age 22."
The family knew little about Fazekas Sr.'s death, other than sparse account of his the wingman, Lt. Charles H. Nott, which differs in some aspects than Cooche's recollection: Nott reported the plane spun out of control, with no radio call for help.
For years they thought he was buried at the Ardennes American Cemetery in Belgium. So in 1983, when Fazekas, Jr. was on active duty, he went to visit the Belgian cemetery. He found his father's name on a wall. A cemetery worker mistakenly told him that he was buried there.
His mother, Theresa, never got over the death of her husband. She was his "darling," ''sweetheart" and "dearest wife" in his letters home. "He was the love of my mother's life. She talked about him constantly, even after she remarried," Fazekas says.
After she died in 2012, Fazekas Jr. planned to scatter her cremated remains in Belgium, near what he thought was his father's grave. But then, in 2015, he got a call from the University of Wisconsin:
They knew where his father's plane had crashed. And they knew that his remains were still there.
___
The effort to find Fazekas Sr. began in 2014, when University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers succeeded in returning the remains of another soldier to his family. That inspired them to reach out to Department of Defense officials the next year to propose a partnership to find the missing. It would become the university's Missing in Action Recovery and Identification Project.
It was good timing. After being criticized for years for failing to recover and identify more remains of U.S. service members, the Defense Department unveiled a revamped agency called Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
More than 82,000 Americans remain missing from conflicts since World War II — nearly 73,000 of them from that war.
Military officials combed through hundreds of cases. They settled on looking for Fazekas, because the statements of Cooche and the wingman pointed to a specific location. Scouts were deployed to France to inspect the crash site and talk with Cooche.
But the next spring, just a few months before excavation was to start, ground penetrating radar found no sign of the crash.
"We were frantic, we were very frantic because we put a lot of time into this case," says Charles Konsitzke, facilitator of the project.
A few days later Department of Defense officials searching the archives found aerial images of the area taken two days after the crash. Konsitzke took the image and overlaid it with a current aerial photo — and they found the exact location.
"It really was dumb luck," says Leslie Eisenberg, a Wisconsin Historical Society archaeologist who also worked on the project. Cooche's memory had been tricked because the road moved years ago to make way for the train, which was only 100 yards from the crash site.
The searchers included volunteers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, burning up their personal vacation time, along with students from the University of Wisconsin and University of Hawaii and Defense Department personnel. They ended up going twice to the site, in 2016 and 2017, digging a 10- to 15-foot deep hole in the hard clay.
They found six machine guns. They found the plane's engine. And they found some bones of Frank Fazekas Sr., and his dog tags.
___
They had a special visitor during the 2016 dig. Frank Fazekas Jr. felt like he was pulled to the site, for his mother: "I feel like I am like completing a story for them."
They gave him a pair of gloves to help out. As the hours passed, he found a piece of the dash board, part of a starter switch, a green plastic cover for the landing gear indicators. He used a wire brush to clean off the mud from the starter motor. He kept some items, including a black rubber piece that may have come off the control stick.
"I thought that might be something my father actually held on to," he says.
He also met the man who was present for his father's last moments: Marc Cooche, who still lived 300 yards from the crash site.
Through an interpreter, they discussed what happened the day of the crash. Until then, Fazekas only knew the wingman's account. But Cooche told Fazekas what he saw, that his father may have tried to maintain control until the end, that he may still have been alive when he crashed.
There were many hugs. Fazekas gave the witness a small model of his father's plane.
"It was like family, almost," Fazekas says.
On May 8 — the 73rd anniversary of the end of the war in Europe — Buysscheure will pay tribute to an airman whose remains had rested within its boundaries, unheralded, for almost three quarters of a century. The building that houses a library, performance room and school will be renamed the Frank Fazekas Cultural Center, and a plaque with his name will be added to the monument to local war dead.
Fazekas, his wife and some university officials plan to return for the festivities.
Cooche also will be there. He remains grateful to the Americans for liberating his country. He chokes up at the prospect of seeing Fazekas again, and standing next to him as his father is honored.
Frank Fazekas Sr., though, will be an ocean away. His remains have finally been returned to his homeland.
He will be buried Wednesday at Arlington National Cemetery.
An Army uniform will be laid out on his bones. And he will share his casket with the ashes of Theresa, his "dearest wife."
As far as I know there is no limitation law on murder. I'd say it has more to do with how old he was. It all depends on the sentencing law the judge follows. Anyway, he's dead now so it's of little consequence what his sentence was.
But they could bury him in the jail.
His obituary was in The Times. I've yet to read it. I don't believe it's common practice to bury dead inmates in the jail. At least not in the UK.