Radovan Zivanovic & friends, Sanjin Tvrde and Marin Iljadica, have been scouring Croatia for years looking for crashed WW2 era planes and so far they've located about 60[!] crash sites. They have also collected a varied assortment of treasures along the way and with them they hope to open a small museum one day. I think it's a great idea.
A few years ago, they located what looks to be the remains of Stan Cotterill & Colin Finlayson's 418 Squadron Mosquito (HR351) on Planik hill about 20 km west of Rijeka, near the villages of Lanisce and Brest in Croatia. Radovan sent me these pictures. I'm guessing (pure guess) the first 4 are parts of HR351 and the rest are some random photos of recovered parts of other planes.
I asked how they knew it was HR351:
"We have problems with this case, but over ex-Yugoslavia crashed just few Mosquitos, and after a lot of research on Google finally we found document where is written Postwar investigations revealed they had crashed in the vicinity of Burguge (near Lanisce), Yugoslavia."
And that is it, Burguge is Brgudac, small village near Lanisce (a bit bigger than Brgudac). Crash site is 4km from Brgudac, and in all area crashed just one more plane from WW2, it was one B-24 (42-51971).
And two other Mosquitos that crashed in ex-Yugo, are far away from Brgudac, MM285 (256Sqn) about 400km from Brgudac and LR471 (60Sqn SAAF) crashed somewhere near Zadar 200km away.
So it was easy to conclude that we found HR351."
Thanks "Rad”, great stuff - if I lived in Europe, I'm sure I would be doing the same thing. Keep up the good work & good luck with your hunting !!
