The weather in Austria historically is like the rainy spring months in the southern United States. Temperatures rarely go above 75 degrees on the few clear days and the conditions are overcast or cloudy about 17 or 18 days out of the month.
That weather data also shows an average of 15 days of precipitation in the month of July as far back as records have been kept.
On the morning of July 8, 1944 the 14th fighter group of the 48th squadron of the United States Air Force had taken off from Triolo, Italy in such conditions to conduct a bombing raid around the countryside surrounding Vienna, Austria. Several of the six plane squadrons encountered enemy aircraft and engaged in air combat with German planes over the Soviet-held territory.
One of the squadrons, led by flight leader First Lieutenant Donald E. Wimmer, had shot down a couple of the German attackers, and it had turned back towards the air base in Italy when the formation was attacked from behind.
The squadron engaged the enemy. In formation, off the left wing of Wimmer was Second Lieutenant Henry Donald Mitchell, a 22-year-old native of Washington County who already was a decorated pilot for his efforts in the European theater.
Wimmer maneuvered the squadron so they were able to get in front of the Luftwaffe Messersmitts, a move that put the slower German planes in peril.
Approximately ten miles Northeast of Vienna just one hour after the Initial air combat had started, one of the other pilots in the squadron called for a "left break".
The planes maneuvered but immediately Lt. Wimmer noticed enemy aircraft approaching from the rear and called for a "right break". Mitchell's plane dipped through a hole in the cloud covering taking him out of visual contact with the rest of the fighters.
Wimmer called out on a radio status check and all five pilots in the squadron replied "okay". That last transmission was heard in the airspace over Deutsch Wagram. Mitchell responded he was "okay" about 10-15 northeast of Vienna, but was never heard from or seen again, and only five of the six planes in the squadron made it back to Italy.
Neither the Red Cross nor German forces reported him as a prisoner of war. With no evidence that Mitchell had survived his disappearance, the War Department issued an administrative Finding of Death on July 9, 1945.
Mitchell was born in Harmon, a small community in northwest Washington County to Willie Edward and Bessie Mitchell on December 17, 1921. It appears the family may have moved to Washington County around 1919-20 from central Arkansas with roots in both Pulaski and Saline counties.
When the Air Force reported that Lt. Mitchell was missing in action his family held on to the hope that, somehow, he had ejected from the plane and possibly even been taken as a prisoner of war.
It was a hope that would last almost 70 years before the few surviving members of his immediate family would be informed of his fate.
The area where the plane was thought to have gone down was under heavy Soviet occupation at the time he went missing. Search opportunities in the area did not improve after the war, when Austria was divided into four occupation zones. Eastern Austria, which included the area surrounding Vienna, was in the Soviet Zone of Occupation.
Shortly after the war ended the American Graves Registration Command, despite the administrative handicaps they encountered, conducted research into the captured German records detailing known shoot-downs of American aircraft.
Those records reported the crash of a P-38 Lightning near Waldegg, Austria on July 8, 1944 and listed the fate of the pilot as unknown. The tail number of the aircraft listed on the report was similar but not identical to the serial number of the P38 piloted by Lt. Mitchell.
Officials spent decades trying to get access to the crash site. According to newspaper reports, the owner of the property in Austria refused to allow any excavation on the land near the Danube River, thereby thwarting any efforts to recover the plane or any remains of Lt. Mitchell.
The landowner died in 2012, and in 2013 the investigative group was able to convince his heirs to allow them to try and put the mystery to rest. The only caveat placed on the excavation by the landowner's surviving son was that it "not take place during deer season", a logic that might not be lost on the Arkansas-born Mitchell.
In 2013 the POW/MIA Accounting Command definitely located a P38 crash site on that Austrian hillside and recovered material evidence and possible human remains from within the aircraft wreckage. It took another eight years, but the remains recovered from the site were entered into the DPAA Identification Laboratory at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska in 2021.
Laboratory analysis and DNA findings, as well as the circumstantial evidence available, established The remains were that of Second Lieutenant Mitchell.
A monument was erected in the Fayetteville National Cemetery under his name after the Air Force finding of "presumed dead" in 1944. Once Lt, Mitchells remains were returned to Arkansas they were interred beneath that monument with full military honors.
One brother, Bob Mitchell, of his immediate family was able to attend the services.
Mitchell's name is recorded on the Tablets of the Missing at Epinal American Cemetery, an American Battle Monuments Commission site in Dinoze, France, along with the others still missing from World War II.
A rosette was placed next to his name in 2021 to indicate he has been accounted for.
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