"The Ghost Plane."

For those unaware. Lt Clauss of Jasta 29 was the pilot of the Albatros D.Va 5390/17 that is now part of Australian War Memorial collection. On December 17th, 1917, the RE8 A3816 crew of Lt Sandy and Lt Hughes of 3 Sqn AFC were attacked by six Albatros Scouts, the battle lasted for several minutes, long enough for two other 3 Sqn AFC RE8's to see, fly to and join in the combat.

Ltn. Rudolf Clauss was wounded in the fight with Sandy and Hughes and his aircraft landed behind the 2nd Division AIF lines. The 3 Sqn AFC men who collected the Albatros reported that the Albatros had been holed in the petrol tank. Clauss's boots which are now in the AWM collection, have two holes in them, one thigh high, the other in the foot. The foot hole is rust coloured from blood.

An Observer of one of the other RE 8 was Hodgson who fired 400 rounds in the engagement, as the other Albatros aircraft had been driven off, Jones the pilot checked on Sandy and Hughes, their RE 8 was flying ok, but neither Sandy or Hughes acknowledged Jones or Hodgson, who assumed that Sandy and Hughes were fine and they flew off to Bailleul for more ammunition. Sandy and Hughes though were not heard from in the squadron that night.

The next day a telegram from the Hospital at St. Pol arrived with the detail of Sandy and Hughes's bodies had been recovered from a safely landed RE 8! The Doctor concluded the pair had been dead for several hours. Captain Ross of 3 Sqn AFC was sent to the site and discovered the RE 8 had only a broken propeller and damaged right wing, the throttle was wide open. The post mortem of Sandy and Hughes deduced that they had been killed by the same bullet, passing through Hughes's lung and into Sandy's skull.

3 Sqn AFC pieced together what had happened the previous day. Sandy and Hughes were killed in the combat with the Albatros aircraft. The RE 8 had flown in wide circles, slowly beeing blown and drifting North-West until running out of fuel, 50 miles away from the original combat, and landing rather gently for an unmanned aircraft.

The Albatros of Rudolf Clauss was recovered by 3 Sqn AFC and became G101 before being presentated to the Australian Government. Clauss was born August 18, 1893 in Grauswitz / Meisen, served for Kest 1a and Jasta 29. Flew Albatros 5390/17 and made PoW in Dec.1917.

Here is my build of D.5390/17 in 1:48 scale. From Bob waugh's description at the Austrailian War Museum, this machine was probably repaired and repainted in the field.

It's amazing how an airplane can land itself without any damage. I fly radio control airplanes and one day I had radio interference, loosing radio control to my 72 inch wingspan aircraft which I assumed to have been destroyed when I lost eye contact with it. I found the plane the following day, sitting on tall grass about a mile away, with NO damage, just a worn out receiver battery!

I really like the worn and repainted look of this Albatros – both lozenge and camo, nice!!!

Mikael

Just bringing this up for Halloween folks!