Bosnian ‘finds’ crashed Spitfire

Kyt · Feb 15, 2008

A tricky one to establish -

Khaleej Times Online - Bosnian villager ‘finds’ crashed WWII Spitfire

SARAJEVO - An elderly Bosnian villager says he had redicovered a World War II Spitfire aircraft that he saw shot down by pro-Nazi Croat forces some 65 years ago.

‘I knew it was there all these years, because I saw when Ustashe soldiers shot it down in 1943,’ Cazim Dautbegovic, 74-year-old resident of Sarvani village in central Bosnia, told AFP.

‘The pilot parachuted out of the plane and was rescued by Partisans,’ he added in reference to the communist-led Yugoslav forces who fought Germans and their local allies.

Dautbegovic said that in 1943, villagers went to the plane to retrieve tyres which they used to make shoes.

The fighter aircraft descended into a wetland area and had since been forgotten about, as it sank below the surface.

However, it is unclear what remains of the plane.

Dautbegovic said he recently told the story to a friend, who located it and proceeded to sell off parts of it as scrap metal.

‘At the location, we found a part of the airplane radio and in the scrap metal market a piece of metal with some numbers and word ’Spitfire’ inscribed,’ Osman Mesan, a journalist of the local Bugojno television station, told AFP.

‘I have issued a public call to protect the wreckage, because I am sure that it is of historic value,’ he said.
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Bosnian ‘finds’ crashed Spitfire

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