Battlefield finds in the ground...

If you ask me, that's an interior wall. The bright lightning suggests an outside location, but that might only be the flash reflecting from the whitewashed walls.
I totally agree with you that these obsects should be conserved properly and not hung from nails, but then we reach the finantial aspect....

There is more than one thing that indicates that this is an outside wall: window in the right side of the photo, the fact that there is no flash on the "naked" German canteen and the German helmet painted red that indicates that there was no flash.

Also the "saceac" (I don't know how it's called in English) leaves a shadow on the wall and a smaller shadow on itself from a "lambriu" (I don't know how it's called in English) at the exterior edge.

It's definately outside. The photo is too well lit to have been taken with a regular built-in blitz.

Took a second look at the picture, and I think you're right.

hey you guys know any good battlefields around sibiu? i feel like going relic hunting.

Yeah, battlefieds, what about looking around Tirgu Frumos and good/safe locations around Iasi?

I went to a 1944 crash site. An american bombardier, crashed near Malu Spart. I searched the area but i could not find anything but this pice of plexiglass:






Is it from the plane???

This post has been edited by cipiamon on February 23, 2006 10:27 am

It certainly looks like a window from a B24.



I had a piece of similar plexiglas (unfortunately I lost it, so I can't use it for comparison purposes) I found near Lancram in an area where a B24 had crashed in late '44. Mine was much smaller, only about 15 cm across, but it still had part of a circular hole in it, so it certainly resembled yours.
Anyway, there are some things that I can't quite make out from the photographs, so can you please give me the exact dimensions? Also, can you tell me if there is a slight curvature to the piece? There were at least 7 types of windows on a B24 that had this type of mounting, so the only way to determine where your piece of plexi came from is analyzing the direction of the curvature (that would give us the orientation the window had in reletion to the aircraft's fuselage) and the size, since no two of the 7 windows mentioned earlier had the same dimensions.

Just in case you were wondering, the photo I posted is tilted 90 degrees to the right, and comes from here. Also, this is the port side navigator's window not, as incorectly mentioned on the site "tail gunner's window" from the B24J "The Dragon and His Tail". Because of the number of fastening bolts present on the picture, I'm pretty sure the piece of plexi you have comes from a much smaller one, such as the windows lining the crew's exit hatch.

BTW, You said you found the plexiglas piece at Malu Spart. Is that near Targoviste by any chance?

PS: edit- typos

This post has been edited by Wings_of_wrath on February 24, 2006 11:08 pm

It is est of Bucharest (north Ogrezeni village).

Thanks for the help!
It has exactly 35 cmm in length.


This is the curvature.


Look how the light reflects from it...



On bouth sides it has signs of wornes... [In zona din interior, zona care sa zicem a fost expusa mai mult la frecarea cu aerul este mai fina, (dar pe ambele parti) si tot in aceste zone este murdara de ceva rosu ca un fel de vopsea, partea din exterior, si parte din interior de ceva negru...]

The exterior part where is something red on it...


The interior part:



And the edge, this is not the part where it was broken:

There are a couple of things that bother me with this piece of plexi.
First off, the size- B24s were constructed using american measure units, (that is, feet and inches), and so it shouldn't measure up coherently into centimeters.
35 cm is 13.779 inch, that makes no sense. The closest I can get is 1.15 feet , that transforms into 35.052 cm, or 1 foot 1,8 inches, and that doesn't sound too right either.
Anyway, can you measure precisely the diameter of the bolt holes and the distance between them? Also, I can see from the picture that the "black stuff" marks the outline of the actual window. Can you measure that too, please?
Another thing that bugs me is the bolt holes. As you can see from the image I posted earlier, the retaining bolts are close together. Initially, I thought your piece to be much smaller, but once you posted the size, I realised the window the plexiglas came from was about the same size, if not a bit larger than the one in the photograph, so the bolt number and size does not match up.
A further detail that doesn't fit the puzzle is the red paint. American aircraft had green interiors, and nothing I can think of in that shade of red.
However, there are some good news - the curvature is "right". It is very likely this piece came from an aircraft, and judging by the blackening on the reverse and the melted paint on the overse side, one that was on fire too, so it could have come from the wreck.
And now, for the crucial question: Are you sure the aircraft crashed near Malu Spart is an american bomber? Because sofar the evidence doesn't point to a B24 and the B17 and 25 had different style windows. Moreover, if I remember correctly, there was allready a case where a crashed Wellington bomber was mis-identified as a B24 until they dug it out, so maybe the plane that crashed near Malu Spart in 1944 was something else entirely. And with the Russian, American, British and German airforces all having bombed Bucharest, the list of contenders is long.

Edit- typos

This post has been edited by Wings_of_wrath on February 26, 2006 11:57 am

Sorry i forgot to mesure that... so here it is:
The bolt hole diameter is 9 mm exactly
The distance from the edge of the hole to next hole's edge is 15,3 cmm, and 7.8 to the closer hole (the one that is cracked in half)
The actual window has 28 cmm exactly (again exactly cmms )



My grand mother told me about a plane in flames that flew her house (Bolintin Vale) and after that she went whit her parents to see the crash place (it was durring the day), she was 11 years old but she remebers it was in the forest or near the forest she doesnt't remeber exactly. First i thoght is the B24 "Pudgy" from the Tydal Wave, but that one crashed at Ogrzeni... anyway i did not knew about this crash place till i asked an old woman from Palanca (at north of Malu Spart) about the war in general and she told me about something about a few american parashoutist that landed in Planaca. I presumed they were americans becouse is happened durring the day. She also rembered the smoking plane going south crashing in or near raul Arges (she did not see the actual crash place) i thought the crash it was verry near Arges in an unhabited area becouse i did not heard anything from any other Bolintin Vale whitnises...
2 weks ago investigating the battles areas from the "Batalia de pe Neajlov" i tryed to ask an old lady from Malu Spart if she heard anything about it from the elders... she didn't but she told me she seen a plane crash at "Padure" and the i made the connection to what my grandmother told me... she said it was exactly at the corner edge of the forest. After driving in that area i only found a single whitnes, that was rushed and did not gived me many details, but he told me the aproximitivly place.
I returned after 2 weeks and traveled that path on the map by foot (it was verry muddy ) Near tha place the plexyglas was found is a SMA a place whit tractors and combines, first i thought it is a window from a SMA machine, but i don't think they had plexyglas for windows, plus it has that curvature...
The plaxyglass has intentinonaly made scrathes on it (in interior and axterior too), made by hand i think, but these scratches follow the outline of the actual window, so i think they were made before the crash...
Could it be from B17? In the nose, above that big round window, there are many windows but one of it cold resamble varry good but i don't have a good picture of that area of the plane.
That edge of the forest is unchanged for at least 100 years, i checked on an old map.



In the forest, near the crash place i found some areas whit black leaves...


I did not spend verry much time in the area, i cold talk to many people in the area about the exactly place, i also heard it was a men who was bulding dishes from aluminum in that area so the investigation continues, if there are any voluntiers that wold like to go in the expedition just tell me, we will get there in 30 min

This post has been edited by cipiamon on February 26, 2006 09:01 pm

Anyone lives around Napoca or in the city?

Where is Napoca? Are you talking about Cluj?

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on March 02, 2006 08:58 pm

Cipiamon: I volunteer, because this mystery aircraft crash is in dire need of more investigating, but I'll be away from Bucharest with business this week-end, so the whole thing would have to wait.
Like I said before, the plexi piece sure looks like it came from an airplane. However, it's not from a B17, because, as you can see in the following two pictures (both taken form here), the window you are reffering to is much to big, and the other ones are too rounded:





Another lead I was investigating was the cockpit "greenhouse" on the B24, but I found a picture of this area on this site, and as you can see, it doesn't match up either (or, to tell you the truth, it would, if only it had bolt holes in it...):



Also on the same site was a good historical photo of my original candidate, the window adjoining the crew's exit hatch on the B24. (visible on the left of the picture) Unfortunately, I couldn't find any close up picture of this area so I can't say for sure what the fastening system looked like.



Anyway, after you posted those measurements, I did some number crunching, and found this: a hole 9mm in diameter fits a metric M9, but an american 3/8 would be pretty close, since it has a diameter of .375in or 9.525mm, so I can't be sure of this yet. The distance between the holes of 153 mm seems to fit nicely the pattern, since it divides with 9, and so does 162 (the distance between two bolt holes is measured from its center to the center of the next one, in this case giving us 162)
Neither of these numbers translate rationally into inches (they measure 5.984 251" or 6.377 952" respectively), so my guess is that the piece of plexi came from an European aircraft.
And when I say European, I also mean British, because back in WW2 the UK used BA (British Asociation) screws, that were defined using metric units. (for example, an "0" gauge BA bolt is 6mm)

Later edit- After some more research, it apears the "0" BA is the largest one built (and seldom used, since it was easily confused with the 1/4), and for larger sizes the brits used BSW of BSF bolts (both series discontinued in 1966 favor of the ISO metric system), that are both in inches. The closest match would be the 3/8 BSF/BSW (British Standard Fine thread/British Standard Whitworth) that would be the same size as an 3/8 USS (United States Standard - the Sellers type thread screws used before the introduction of the "Unified Series" in 1948).

Also, there seems to be another American screw type close to the 9mm mark, the "#22" (it has a diameter of 8.788mm), that would have been in use during WW2, since it has been discontinued in 1948 in favor of the 3/8 UNF (UNified Fine). So I guess it all comes down to wherever the #22 was a widely used screw type in the aircraft industry of ww2 to determine if the plane might have been American after all.

BTW, Cipiamon, what did you use to determine the size of the holes?

This post has been edited by Wings_of_wrath on March 03, 2006 04:48 am

If we go to the Malu Spart probably we are gonna find more clues, the only problem is the muddy land, we gonna have to wait a bit for it to dry up.
I mesured the hole whit that "rigla" that apears in the first pictures.
I fond a probable location here is a picture:

Here is the source
It can also explaine the curvature.
What do you think?

Later edit: What was i thinking?... The bolts do not fit

This post has been edited by cipiamon on March 03, 2006 10:38 am