I was assigned as a fixed - wing pilot and rotary - wing qualified Army Aviator to the Message Center - Aviation Section of the Operations Company, 97th Signal Battalion. The battalion was in support of the 160th Signal Group whose mission was to provide communications from 7th Army Headquarters to V and VII Corps and a separate Armored Division in Germany.

All Army aviators arriving in Western Germany were required to have orientation flights to familiarize them with flight ops and in particular, the East German border area. Along with several other newly arriving aviators, I received my orientation by riding in the rear seat of a 7th Army Aviation Section piloted L-20 aircraft. During our orientation flight, the weather was so bad along the border area that this portion of the flight was scrubbed. We did an over flight of the Rhine River valley with an overnight stay in Mannheim prior to returning to Stuttgart - Echterdingen the following day. I never received the border area over flight that was supposed to be part of this orientation but nevertheless, was shortly released for operational flying in Germany.

March 17 1955 High Adventure Begins

In mid March, I was flying from a field location for the German Army Airfield at Hanau. I was happy to be pilot in command of a rotary wing, bubble canopy H13 model Army helicopter. My mission that day was to fly Herr Horst Kuehn, the Commander of a German Signal Corps Labor Service Battalion from his Command Post in a field location near Friedberg (Hesse) Germany to an area south of Fulda so he could inspect his unit’s communications lines, visit his field units and then return to his CP location.

Of note, Army aircraft flight - following procedures during this era were practically non - existent. This was the beginning of the true Cold War but some procedures were still in place from the U.S. Army Constabulary Period.

At fixed field locations, arriving or departing pilots would sign in and out on a Constabulary Sign Out Book which could be reconciled through the phones or radio if necessary but even this simple system did not exist at field locations. It was possible to fall “ through the cracks “ if no one was carefully monitoring an aircraft departure and subsequent anticipated arrival at another field site.

On the specific day in question. The weather was not good but considered flyable. I picked up Herr Kuehn and began the flight to Fulda. I elected to fly a compass heading to the Fulda area and calculated the time of flight. I planned to refuel at Fulda Army Airfield and then begin the specific itinerary of Herr Keuhn’s inspection. In retrospect, I should have been much better at the time honored traditions of flying IFR ( I follow roads ) and was unaware that the magnetic compass that I was using as the primary navigation aid had, if fact, a 20-25 degree error.

I was following an east - northeast compass heading and flying into a strong northwest head wind, the combined affect of the compass error and the weather soon had me much further south and east than my anticipated flight plan. I would have caught the error had I been regularly checking the roads and towns on my map with what we were observing thru the bubble but, this was not the case. As heavy snow showers further complicated the situation, I realized I was disorientated and unsure of my location. As stated earlier, this was well before all the navigational, radar and radio tracking Army air traffic controls that would become so routine to aviators a few years later.

One cannot be too proud to ask directions and that is what we attempted to do. From the air, we spotted a farmer and his ox cart and I set the helicopter down in an open field to allow Herr Kuehn to find out where we were. I stayed with the aircraft to study the maps, Herr Kuehn spoke with the farmer. We naturally assumed we were still in West Germany; sadly, this was not the case.

Captured

I guess if you’re going to be flying in marginal weather with a bad compass and you become so lost as to have to ask a German farmer for directions, you figure it couldn’t get much worse. Well, it got worse.

At about the time that Herr Keuhn determined we had crossed the border and landed in East Germany, rumbling down the road towards us came a bus load of East German border guards. At any other time of the day, the road would have been just for farm use, but as luck had it, they were in the middle of changing the guards so the bus was filled with troops and we were truly in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Looking back at it, we were somewhere very close to the poorly marked border in the rolling farm country to the southeast of Meiningen.

I looked up from the maps to see Herr Keuhn being loaded into the bus and a group of guards approaching the aircraft with weapons drawn. I shut the engine down and was allowed to secure the blades with the tethers before I too was loaded into the bus, a prisoner of the Cold War. We were taken to their Headquarters.

Gone Missing - Search and Rescue Operations