Fieseler

One of him was Vinnie Herget, who was a former night fighter pilot, ace, again, Knights Cross holder.

And he appointed him and one of his aides, to uh gallant had the use of a feesless storsh which by this time gallant had been shot down um he'd been shot down by by thunderbolts um and oh mustangs and thunderbolts actually but anyway he was he was injured he had he had shrapnel in his in his knee he was laid up in um a villa not far from uh ream or uh yeah not far from ream And he had a use of a Fieseler Storch, not that he flew it.

So he sent Herget and his other staff officer said, look, why don't we, I want you to go to the Americans, to the nearest American forces.

And by this stage, they were between Munich and Salzburg, they were pushing from the West.

Their supreme commander, Field Marshal Friedrich Schörner, had long since left his troops in the lurch and absconded.

On May the 9th, dressed in civilian clothes and with several thousand marks from government coffers in his possession, he had flown in a Fieseler Storch to Austria, where a short time later he was arrested by the Americans.

Members of the SS, who in the last weeks of the war had stood out through particularly fanatical resistance, had intermingled with ordinary German soldiers.

Heinrich Himmler's henchmen obviously felt safe in the midst of a stream of soldiers, nurses and civilian employees flooding back to Germany.