Plaque commemorating emergency landing of US bomber on lake in 1944 unveiled

Last Saturday the mayor of Zug, Karl Kobelt, unveiled a plaque commemorating the emergency landing of a United Stated Air Force bomber on Lake Zug exactly 75 years ago, namely on 16 March 1944, a Thursday.
 

The plaque marks the spot, by the Wöschhüsli in the Unter Altstadt area of the Old Town where pilot Robert W. Meyer came ashore that day. Speaking to a crowd of invited dignitaries, members of the public and journalists, Kobelt mentioned the courage, selflessness and sense of responsibility shown by people at that time, and by the pilot in particular, qualities which serve as an example to us all today.    

This followed a very well attended lecture given the evening before by Oskar Rickenbacher, at which Sher Larsen-Green, the daughter of a crew member of the B-17G aircraft, Sergeant Carl. J. Larson, was also present.

Rickenbacher (on the left in the photograph), the initiator of the commemoration, has vivid memories of that day in1944. "I was only five at the time and I heard the plane's engines screaming and the sirens going. I ran straight away to hide under the outside stairs of our house on Industriestrasse. After all, I had heard on the radio and from my parents about the bombing raids on Germany,” he said on a previous occasion.

He spoke at length about the incident, with Christian Raschle, a former city archivist, mentioning how Meyer had made his way to the shore that day, wondering how he would communicate with locals. Fortunately, English-speaking waitress Rösli Bischof was duly summoned to interpret.
 

The following is an article published by the Zuger Zeitung in 2014 beginning with how Werner Binzegger, then just eight years old, recalled it all very clearly.
 

At the time, the boy lived with his family on Asylstrasse in Baar, not far from St Martin's Church. "I remember playing in the garden in the snow and suddenly, at ten to one, there was this terribly loud noise in the sky and I looked up to see this huge aircraft flying over our house, with two smaller planes accompanying it. Then I noticed parachutists jumping out."

Without further ado and without asking his parents, the boy ran off to the Schmidhof and Wiesental area, which had not been built on at the time. "And then I saw a soldier in a fur jacket lying by a stream." In fact young Binzegger had arrived on the scene even before the military had got there. When they did arrive, they immediately forced the boy and other onlookers to leave the area. "The next thing I remember was how they brought the soldier's body to the mortuary as it was next to our house," he said. He subsequently discovered the soldier's name was Robert L. Williams, who was killed after his parachute failed to open. "It was the first time I had ever seen a dead body in my life," he said. "And it made me very sad."

It was not long later that he and his brothers found out that two injured airmen had been taken to the Asyl, the hospital at the time. "We were not allowed to visit them, but they passed us chewing gum and small change through the windows," he said. The boys did not actually see the plane land, but others noticed how it was flying at an angle before it landed on the lake, with only two of its four engines working.

One of these witnesses was Josef Zeberg, then seven years old. He lived with his parents at the northern end of Oberwil. "In those days, every time we heard a loud noise, we made straight for the windows." Mostly it was the Swiss army marching by, but not on that day in March 1944. "I remember seeing this plane flying low over the Albis and then it came almost right over our house; then I saw parachutists jump out. We never thought about the danger at the time, after all, during World War II, planes used to fly over our house from time to time." He also recalled foil strips coming down, a method of outwitting German radar.

After the plane had landed, it remained on the surface with someone sitting on the wing for about five minutes and then it sank.

What he did not see was how the pilot, Robert Meyer, aged just 22, managed to get to the lake shore and was given a meal in the Aklin restaurant.

The plane had in fact taken off at around 3 am that morning from RAF Great Ashfield in Suffolk, heading, with others, to bomb the Messerschmitt factory in Augsburg. However, on approaching Stuttgart, the formation was attacked by the Luftwaffe, resulting in the windscreen of the plane being shot out and two engines damaged. As it crossed into Swiss air space, it was escorted by two aircraft and then the damaged plane spiralled down over Lake Zug to gradually decrease its altitude, with the pilot ordering his crew to parachute out over Baar, as they did, the plane going on to land on the lake

The wreckage of the plane remained at the bottom of Lake Zug for eight years before it was salvaged by a garage owner in an eight-week operation. It was then put on show, for a charge, and then exhibited at various places around the country, for the last time in 1970 in St Moritz. After then it was dismantled for scrap.

Out of interest, Meyer subsequently made  it back to Suffolk and returned to the United States from there.