Prague, Oct 21 (CTK) – This year’s extreme drought enabled Czech historians to uncover the debris of a Soviet Il-2 fighter that had lain underground since wartime, which surprisingly contained bodily remains of the pilot who had been officially buried long ago, daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) writes Wednesday.
Il-2, which the Germans dubbed Black Death, was one of the most successful military planes in World War Two.
One of them was shot down by the Germans in the Lanzhot area, south Moravia, in April 1945. Members of the Czech Historian Society tried to dig the debris out in 1982 for the first time but they failed.
“The plane fell amid a swamp. The water level was some 60 centimetres underground [in 1982]. We lacked a suitable equipment and the terrain was extremely difficult. That is why we gave up the efforts,” Vlastimil Schildberger, a military historian who has been searching for Soviet planes’ debris for long four decades, is quoted as saying.
The experts made another attempt after the extremely hot and dry summer this year, when the underground water level sank and heavy equipment could enter the locality.
This time they succeeded in digging out the debris, including propellers, the engine and the dashboard, as well as watches and other personal effects belonging to the crew.
The most important find was the armoured cockpit with human bones lying below it.
Judging by their position, the bodily remains are those of the pilot, Ivan Stepanovich Nikolayev.
Nikolayev, however, was buried in a cemetery in the nearby town of Hodonin long ago. Schildberger believes that the man erroneously buried as Nikolayev was in fact the sniper from the plane, Chuprov, who ejected himself before the plane crashed, the paper writes.
The bones are being examined by experts from the Brno University, who may help ascertain to whom they belonged.
This is quite a difficult task, however, anthropologist Eva Drozdova told MfD.
“We have only bone fragments damaged by heat,” she said, adding that the analysis is also difficult because Nikolayev and Chuprov were approximately of the same age, one only six year older than the other.
