Two armourers were stood outside the armoury having a smoke. One of them noticed a piece of wire sticking up out of the ground. Fot some reason he pulled it but it was stuck to something. Wonder what its conected to he thought. So he got a shovel and dug down, what did he find I here you ask? Well he found a box, what was inside it? Only an MG42 machine gun!!
But that wasnt the only thing found buried at Gutersloh, near 4 Squadron a dozen boxes of 20mm ammo were found. And near the armoury a British 500lb bomb was found.
It was ATC who discovered the missing Canberra.
The RAF believed the story they court-martialled and convicted the person involved. The transcript is in the TNA.
The 1500 or so people stationed at Gutersloh at the relevant time also believed it. Still perhaps it was mass hypnosis.
Whilst in the RAF I met similar characters to the villain in this story but this takes some beating. I was 17 at that time and still at Halton and don't recall hearing the tale then.
In May 1969 Sergeant Paul Meyer got drunk and then stole a C130 from Mildenhall. Its wreckage was later discovered in the English Channel 30 miles off Bournemouth. He was tracked on radar over Thames Estuary, passed over Brighton at 16,000 ft and was heading towards Le Havre before he turned back towards Weymouth and vanished. Just before the plane crashed Meyer made a transmission on a channel that was tuned directly to Langley AFB in Virginia where his wife lived.
After this 513th Wing chained its planes down. Keys had to be collected from the control tower with lots of paperwork to complete. Far too time consuming and after a few week the scheme was dropped!
In 1958 a mechanic stole a B-45 Tornado and crashed it onto the main London-Edinburgh railway line at Wood Walton.
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