{"id":50583,"date":"2023-02-23T23:32:44","date_gmt":"2023-02-23T22:32:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/?p=50583"},"modified":"2026-02-23T02:05:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T01:05:07","slug":"dottie-mae-the-incredible-story-of-the-last-american-plane-downed-in-europe-in-wwii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2023\/02\/23\/dottie-mae-the-incredible-story-of-the-last-american-plane-downed-in-europe-in-wwii\/","title":{"rendered":"Dottie Mae: the incredible story of the last American plane downed in Europe in WWII"},"content":{"rendered":"

May 7, 1945 is a date that has gone down in history as the day Nazi Germany surrendered to the Western Allies in Reims.<\/p>\n

Ye Olde Pub: The American B-17 bomber saved by a German Bf-109 fighter pilot<\/a><\/rel>
\nThe HA-1112 Buch\u00f3n fighter on display at a Michigan museum with its Spanish roundels<\/a><\/rel><\/p>\n

The next day, Germany signed another surrender to the Soviets in Berlin. The last pockets of German resistance surrendered on May 12. The Allies marked May 8, 1945 as Victory in Europe Day<\/strong>, and that day also saw the last loss of a US military aircraft in the European theater of operations (remember that the war continued until September 2, 1945 in the Pacific with Japan).<\/p>\n

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The Evansville, Indiana, factory where final assembly of the P-47 fighters was made. This is where the protagonist of our story came from in the summer of 1944 (Source: Alamy).<\/div>\n

A few months before that, in the summer of 1944, a Republic P-47D-28-RA Thunderbolt fighter, serial number 42-29150, rolled out of the Evansville, Indiana factory<\/strong>. On September 30, it left New York Harbor, disassembled and aboard a ship bound for the United Kingdom. Already in Liverpool, it was taken to Speke airfield, where it was assembled and tuned.<\/strong> The device was assigned to the 511th Fighter Squadron of the 405th Fighter Group of the 9th Air Force.<\/p>\n

The 42-29150 was delivered as-new to Lieutenant Lawrence \"Larry\" Kuhl, who decided to name it Dottie Mae, after his wife.<\/strong> Larry tasked a member of the ground crew, Sergeant Samuel L. Kirschenbaum, with to paint a pin-up on the left side of the plane's nose, taking an image of a girl from a Roberto Vargas December 1944 calendar<\/strong>, nicknamed \"Santa's Little Helper\".<\/p>\n

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The P-47D \"Dottie Mae\" with the drawing of the pin-up that Lt. Lawrence \"Larry\" Kuhl commissioned from a member of the ground crew (Source: alliedfighters.com<\/a>).<\/div>\n

On December 16, 1944, Dottie Mae took off for its first combat mission.<\/strong> In the next five months the plane completed a total of 90 missions, of which Larry flew 39. Dottie Mae's last mission was scheduled for the last day of the war, May 8, 1945 .<\/a> It would be an aerial demonstration formed by 20 P-47s over the Ebensee concentration camp, in Austria, in order to raise the morale of the prisoners who were still there. On this occasion, Lieutenant Henry Mohr would go to the controls of the plane.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Flying over Lake Traunsee, Mohr descended too low<\/strong> and ended up brushing the propeller with the water, causing the plane to lose momentum and the pilot had no choice but to make an emergency splashdown. Dottie Mae ended up sinking into the lake, <\/strong> although Lieutenant Mohr was able to get to safety.<\/p>\n

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The Dottie Mae, rising from the bottom of Lake Traunsee after 60 years (Photo: sandysea.org<\/a>).<\/div>\n

This could be the end of the story for Dottie Mae. The plane spent 60 years at the bottom of Lake Traunsee, until it was rescued on June 13, 2005 by<\/strong> Sandy Air Corp<\/a>. The plane was located by sonar in April of that year, at a depth of 64 meters and sunk upside down. Despite so many years submerged, the cold, mud and silt relatively protected the plane, so it was considered that it could be recovered.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jack Croul, a World War II veteran, bought the plane<\/strong> and a long process of restoring the Dottie Mae<\/a>, during which the pin-up of its nose was repainted<\/a> taking as reference the original design of Roberto Vargas, with the changes that Sergeant Kirschenbaum had made (the mask of Saint Claus on his right hand does not appear on the plane). Finally, the Dottie Mae, once restored, flew again on June 23, 2017<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The Dottie Mae flying again after its restoration (Photo: planesoffame.org<\/a>).<\/div>\n

You can see below several videos of this emblematic aircraft and its incredible history. Here is a video from Sandy Air Corp with pictures of their recovery process<\/strong> at Lake Traunsee:<\/p>\n