I wonder if Ryan has any comments about this. The info came from the Accident Report. Maybe the Rucker aircraft is not the same one. Needs a close look for signs of damage repair.
On May 17, 1944 Stinson L-5 42-99103 was on a cross-country flight from the 9th Air Service Command depot at Grove, Berkshire to RAF Cranage, not far from Manchester, via Kidderminster. After flying around numerous showers, pilot First Lt John Reiter and his observer, First Lt Bruce Fuller, became completely lost. With fuel down to five gallons and surrounded by mountainous terrain, they made a precautionary landing in a cultivated field. Unfortunately, the soil was very soft and the aircraft nosed over. Both men escaped unhurt and learned that they were about one mile west of Dolgellau on the road to Llanelltyd. The site is almost on the west coast of Wales.
An investigation was conducted by Major Ervin Miller from Atcham, the nearest USAAF station. If he followed his usual practice of landing a Piper Cub as near to a crash as possible, he must have picked a more suitable field! His report states, in part: "Lt Reiter, due to poor navigation, became hopelessly lost and due to the locality in which he found himself, became over-anxious. There are very few airdromes south and east from the point where he attempted his landing; however, RAF Llanbedr and RAF Towyn were only 10 or 12 miles distant to the NW and SW.
"Had Lt Reiter been properly instructed in British maps and navigation procedure, this accident would have been avoided. Also, had he carried out precautionary emergency landing procedure and had chosen a more suitable landing field, he would have prevented his aircraft from nosing over."
Its fuselage bent and left wing crumpled, the aircraft was declared a write-off and £2 was claimed by the farmer for damage to his crop of young oats. The story, however, does not end there because the Stinson L-5 on display in the US Army Aviation Museum at Fort Rucker, Alabama, is apparently the very same aircraft! At least it bears the same serial number. The FAA's N-Number site has 42-99103 as becoming N6407C, so maybe it flew again? Did some Sergeant Bilko character ship the wreck back to the States and sell it? Or maybe the initial inspection was over-pessimistic and it was repaired after all?
Note that the Harlech P-38 is only about ten miles from where the L-5 came to grief. Wonder if that will ever get to a musuem
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