^{The News}
Dedicated to Austrian-Hungarian Burgenland Family History

There are interesting things in both Richard's example page and the one I show.

First, note that the village of Welten is spelled Welden on Richard's page. This again suggests that an German-speaking outsider performed a phonetic spelling of the spoken village name but was confused by the strong local dialect (Velike is the Hungarian name and is sufficiently different from Welten, so that likely did not influence the recorded spelling). [There are many other villages in the House Lists with slight misspellings of their name on the forms.]

Second, note the handscript used in the Gattung des Gebäudes column—it is the German Kurrentschrift handscript font, whereas the preceding columns were written in the Latin handscript font. (If you are curious, most of those entries state "Wohn u[nd] Wirtschafts gebaude s[amt] Hof" [Residential and economic buildings, including yard] or "Wohngebaude s[amt] Hof" [Residential buildings, including yard]). While I have seen the handscript combination as shown in the Welten example, far more common is for only the Ortschaft name and the surnames to be in the Latin font (see my example form); the given names are most often in Kurrentschrift and the right-side columns are always Kurrentschrift. Occasionally, the full form is in Kurrentschrift. I remain baffled by this intermixing of handscript fonts, as I have no idea as to why differing scripts were used.

The third note I'll make concerns the columns on the right half of the form. Of these, I've seen only the Anmerkung (Comment) column in use. This, despite the fact that the primary purpose of the House Lists had to be for taxation purposes—yet the columns relating to taxes were never filled in! Why was this, I ask?

Lastly, I'll note that there were at least two other House List forms in common use during this time (though Klaus usually obtained only the one discussed herein). The form I find more interesting lists (alphabetically) all residents of the village, regardless of whether they were property owners, and gives their "stand" (status, such as Bauer, Inwohner, etc.) in the village. And, yes, these forms were written in German.

Meanwhile I had a perfect landing in a meadow. I thought I was on some huge estate because every thing was neat as a pin and very beautiful. I ran as fast as I could for some dense trees and bushes I saw in the distance. I kept running until exhaustion overcame me and took cover under some of the thick bushes. I expected to be found at any time so decided to move on. I knew I was about nine hundred miles from the front lines and that they were somewhere to the south. I started walking through the forest until I came upon some fields and could hear people who were working there. It began to get dark so I found a tree with a suitable trunk to sleep in where no one could see me, and spent the night there.

The next morning I noticed a cart trail and then I heard someone coming. As I watched I could see that it was an ox cart full of beets driven by a very old man with a long white beard. He was smoking a long clay pipe, the bowl of which was resting on his lap. I watched him go back and forth for a good part of the day as I tried to figure out what to do. I considered my options and then decided to approach the old man. I stepped out from the bushes and confronted him. He looked horrified and, as he frantically reached for his whip, his pipe broke into pieces and he began to flog the oxen into a run. As he disappeared down the trail I knew it would just be a matter of time before I would be captured.

A few hours later about eighty people from the little town, armed with pitchforks, hoes and clubs, came after me. I put my hands high above my head while they all surrounded me. At first it looked like I was in for a rough time. They kept saying words that sounded like "are you a German" in angry voices. I then said American! And their whole attitude changed. They broke out in smiles, gave me water and food, and motioned, without forcing me, to go with them. Once into the town I was taken to what looked like a town meeting hall. It was a large room with windows all around it. Soon a big black limousine pulled up and a large, very official looking man, dressed in an old-fashioned politician-type suit came in. His henchmen made me stand in the middle of the room and the 'official', in broken English, began asking me questions. He demanded I strip off all of my clothes. I could see that they intended to force me if I objected, so I took everything off down to my shorts. The whole town, men, women and children, had their faces glued to the windows...

I was led to the town prison and placed in a cell. The prison was a family-run place with about 10 cells down the hall from the family home. The room had nothing in it except a chamber pot. There was a barred window at one end overlooking a courtyard. The heavy door was locked and had a peephole in it, which was extensively used all night. After about three days, they took me to a bigger prison in another town. The two guards were not Germans; they were dressed in strange uniforms and wore hats that had brightly colored feathers sticking out at the top. Our transportation was an ox cart and took most of the day to get to our destination.

The new prison was run in a more military fashion and I was interrogated regularly. My recollection is that my stay there was only a few days. These people, again, did not seem to be German soldiers but rather Hungarian or Austrian police, or some sort of military type. After a few days, four guards, with rifles, came for me. I was then marched to the rail station.

At the rail station, I was turned over to a single guard who purchased a ticket for both of us. Once on the train, word quickly spread about my presence and soon a woman appeared who spoke perfect English. The car we were riding in filled up with people and the woman asked me many questions, interpreting and conveying the answers to the crowd. The trip lasted about 5 hours, ending at a Vienna train station.

Bob Strauch replies: Hi Jim, I'm the pal that Margaret asked to help. I checked some detailed maps I have of the Sopron area and have located the triangle.

There are actually quite a few villages within that triangle and there's no way of telling which is the one we're looking for. Maybe the articles from the Ödenburger Zeitung will pinpoint the location. Send me the articles and I'll translate them.



Jim responds: Attached is a copy of the GPS map of the location where Sam bailed out. The following statement may be helpful as well: "Somehow, although I was the lightest man on the crew, I had been issued a 25-foot chute. Also, though I didn't know it at the time, I had been the first to jump. These two factors caused me to drift far away from the rest of the crew, whom I found out later, were captured right away by townspeople. It seems our airplane crashed into their town which made them furious and they gave the crew a severe beating."



Bob replies: Here are the translated articles and a map.

The article of June 27th:

2 USA-Bombers Crash in Sopron County, 10 enemy pilots captured.
As reported, there was an air raid yesterday in the city and county of Sopron. The Hungarian defense went into action and was successful. As published, 2 USA-bombers crashed near the towns of Csapod and Csepreg. 2 enemy pilots were killed. 10 enemy pilots saved themselves by parachuting. They were captured near the villages of Esterháza, Iván and Csapod by police, along with the assistance of villagers. 2 villagers were injured by enemy paratroopers and had to be taken to Kapuvár hospital.

The article of June 28th:

Aerial Combat in the Airspace of Sopron
MTI reports from Lövö: Aerial combat took place yesterday morning in the airspace of Sopron County. A 4-engine bomber crashed within the boundaries of Bük and was still burning at midday in the field. The enemy units threw tinfoil ribbons and used Brandplättchen [white phosphorus fire tiles] to start fires, which were extinguished. A bomber crashed in the forest of Röjtök [Röjtökmuzsaj], while several bombers crashed within the boundaries of Köszeg. Between Újkér and Felsöszopor [now part of Újkér], crews of damaged crafts parachuted to the ground. 3 of them have already been captured.

Message from Austrian National Library accompanying the newspaper articles:
Dear Mr. Hewitt, in the "Ödenburger Zeitung" we located two articles about American bomber crewmen who were shot down. You find the copies of these articles in the attachment. Pamhagen is in the surroundings of Ödenburg (Hungary). Ödenburg was the former name of Sopron. In the issues from June 27th-30th of the "Völkischer Beobachter" we could not trace any relevant article. For further information see http://www.onb.ac.at/ev/use/awi/awi_eng.htm#comresearch. With kindest regards, Mag. Gerda Koller, Austrian National Library, Research Department. Josefsplatz 1, 1015 Wien Mail: Gerda.Koller@onb.ac.at http://www.onb.ac.at



And finally, Jim writes: Hi Bob, Thanks you all your assistance. It appears that my uncle bailed our near Csepreg and Csapod. The news article says some crewmen were captured in Esterháza, Iván and Csapod. My uncle says it was a small village of poor beet farmers.

According to the first newspaper article, "2 USA-bombers crashed near the towns of Csapod and Csepreg." Csapod is located at latitude 47.51N and longitude 16.91E. Csepreg is located at latitude 47.40N and longitude 16.71E. My uncle bailed out at latitude 47.30N and longitude 16.91E. When he landed he traveled south to the village he was captured at. He states that the villagers were poor beet farmers. Csapod appears to be located to the northeast of Csepreg. Where are Esterháza and Iván in relation to Csapod and Csepreg? I've found some on-line maps of western Sopron County.



More info from Bob: Csepreg has a population of 3500. Pusztacsalád 300. Csapod 650. Iván 1000. SE of Iván are 3 small villages: Csér 50, Csáfordjánosfa 250, and Répceszemere 270. To the SE of Pusztacsalád seems to be a small settlement called Erdölakmajor. Might just be a cluster of houses, not an independent settlement. "Major" means dairy farm. Esterháza is now called Fertöszentmiklos and lies to the NE of Csapod on the main rail line Sopron-Györ.

(ED [Gerry] Note: This was a project; a lengthy thread involving a number of people. My apologies if I garbled the sequence. I doubt if we can find another WW-II Burgenland story like this.)

Now I'll add my maps and comments: As you may have noted above, Jim Hewitt says, "My uncle bailed out at latitude 47.30N and longitude 16.91E," and he also provides latitude and longitude for two villages as well. However, these are not given in the standard 'degrees, minutes and seconds' format of many printed mapping schemes. Instead, they represent only degrees (and fractions thereof). So, '47.30N' indicates 47 degrees + 3/10th of a degree. In minute/seconds format, that 3/10th degree would add 18 minutes, zero seconds (= 47° 18' 0" total in 'standard' format). '16.91' would be 16 degrees, 54 minutes, 36 seconds (16° 54' 36").

You compute these minutes and seconds by taking the fractional part (.91 for the second example) and multiplying by 60 (as there are 60 minutes per degree). Doing so gives 54.6 minutes. Again, we take the fractional part (.6 here) and multiple by 60 (as there are 60 seconds per minute). Doing so gives 36 seconds. Had this calculation not resulted in an integer (whole) number, one can drop the fraction, round it, or keep the fraction... but dropping or rounding it is more than accurate enough for our purposes here. 

Nonetheless, I note that GoogleMaps accepts the fractional format that Jim used... and inserting "47.30N 16.91E" into GoogleMap's address line yields this:



So "A" marks the spot where Jim's uncle says he bailed out. [I also could have entered "47 18 0 N 16 54 36 E" into GoogleMaps (i.e., standard degree, minute, second format), which would have yielded an identical location.]

On the above map, you can also see that a number of the villages mentioned in the original article are shown: clockwise from Sopron near the top center are Pamhagen to its right, Kapuvár and Csorna, Beled and Kenyeri, Bük and Köszeg, and finally Lövö. All the other mentioned villages are within this region but are too small to be shown at this map resolution. Note also the dark gray squiggly line up the middle of the map: it is the border between Burgenland and Hungary, so all mentioned places except Pamhagen are in Hungary, not Burgenland.

While they are not shown at this map resolution, the triangle of railroad tracks mentioned in the article would be as follows: 1) a line from Sopron past Kapuvár and Csorna heading east; 2) a line from Sopron heading south within Hungary to Szombathely; and 3) a line from Szombathely past Sárvár and heading northeast.

Interestingly, the news articles indicate that most of the activity took place mainly within the Lövö / Kapuvár / Beled triangle, which suggests that the prevailing winds took the parachuting airmen and crashing planes north from where Jim's uncle bailed out, with the center of that region being some 12 miles north of that bailout location. I have no idea of what the wind speed was when Jim's uncle bailed, but we can do some back-calculations to see if a drift of that distance was possible...

First, most WW-II bombing took place at 18-24,000 feet of elevation... let's assume 24,000 feet to give uncle the greatest drift time. Also, I see that WW-II parachutes descended at a rate of 18-24 feet per second. Let's assume the slowest rate given what uncle said about his parachute and weight. Given this, we can compute descent time as 24000/18 = 1333 seconds = 22 minutes = 0.37 hours. So, how fast must the average wind speed have been to drift 12 miles in 0.37 hours? The answer is 12/0.37 = 33 mph. This seems quite possible. Taking a worse-case scenario (jumping at 18,000 feet and descending 24 feet per second), similar calculations show that an average wind speed of 57 mph would suffice... again this seems possible. So, if the wind was toward the north and reasonably brisk up high, drifting from where Jim's uncle bailed to the region mentioned in the articles could be done.

Of course, had the plane descended significantly before anyone bailed out, then the required average wind speed becomes so great that a drift of twelve miles seems unlikely. One fact that supports the possibility of such a drift is that the prevailing summertime winds in western Hungary are NW to N-NW, clearly consistent with the direction suggested by the story.

To learn more about these events, we need better map detail and also must cope with changes in place names...



From the news article on the 27th, we know that "2 USA-bombers crashed near the towns of Csapod and Csepreg" and that "10 enemy pilots... were captured near the villages of Esterháza, Iván and Csapod."

Also, from the article on the 28th, a "bomber crashed within the boundaries of Bük"  and a "bomber crashed in the forest of Röjtök [Röjtökmuzsaj], while several bombers crashed within the boundaries of Köszeg. Between Újkér and Felsöszopor [now part of Újkér], crews of damaged crafts parachuted to the ground."

Of the above-mentioned locations, only Bük and Köszeg appear on the map shown above. Further, as the original article noted, Esterháza is now known as Fertöszentmiklos. In addition, my inserted notes indicate that Röjtök has been renamed as Röjtökmuzsaj and that Felsöszopor has been incorporated into Újkér. To show these locations, I will resort to maps we reference on the BB homepage under title "Hungarian Maps". I do this for two reasons: first, they show older names and have appropriate detail. Second, they have construction details I wish to point out.

Our Hungarian maps are indexed on BB page http://www.the-burgenland-bunch.org/Hungary/Hungary_Maps.html. If you go there, you will see that the maps are grouped and arranged from quite general down to the specific pre-1921 Hungarian counties that Burgenland was created from.

I wish to start with the very last set—those that are for Vas Megye, as that is the county over which Jim's uncle bailed out. Among the 7 images for Vas, I'll start with the fourth one (http://www.the-burgenland-bunch.org/Hungary/Vas_1.jpg), which is from year 1897. While I will extract clips from this map, you may wish to view the whole map to get a better perspective.

The first thing I wish to point out are the latitude and longitude markings on the map. The latitude markings are on the left and right and are connected by thin black, slightly curved horizontal lines running across the page. [If, after displaying the map, you click on it, you will see that so-clicking causes the map to get larger or smaller... and larger will help you see the details.] Reading the markings, you should see that the latitude ranges from ~46 degrees at the bottom to ~47 degrees, 30 minutes at the top. Given the numbers are higher at the top, we know this represents latitude North (N). Jim's uncle bailed at 47° 18' 0" N latitude, which is, therefore, within the latitude range of this map.

Now, if you look at the top and bottom edges of the map, you will see the longitude markings and the vertical lines connecting them. Reading the markings, you should see that the longitude ranges from ~33 degrees, 30 minutes at the left to ~35 degrees, 15 minutes at the right. (Again, the orientation of these numbers tells us this is East longitude.) However, you may recall that Jim's uncle bailed at 16° 54' 36" E longitude... which is, apparently, nowhere near the longitude range of this map! So what went wrong?

The answer can be found at the bottom of the map, where it says "34° Keleti hosszúság Ferrótól." Translated from Hungarian, this says "34° East longitude Ferrótól." What this notation indicates is that longitudes on the map are relative to the Ferro / Ferrótól / Ferrói prime meridian, which is a prime meridian based on Ptolemy's 150 AD estimate of the "end" of the world, thought to be the western edge of El Hierro Island (aka, Ferro Island) in the Atlantic off the coast of Morocco. [This prime meridian was used by a number of European countries for land maps through and beyond WW-I. See page: http://www.prz.ginsburgs.org/web_stuff/mainframe.html for more information.]

Jim's uncle reported his longitudes relative to the Greenwich prime meridian (which is also the meridian used by GoogleMaps). It turns out that the Ferrótól meridian is 17° 39' 46.02" west of the Greenwich meridian, so we must add these numbers to 16° 54' 36" to get the bailout location relative to the Ferrótól meridian. Doing so gives us a longitude of 34° 34' 22" Keleti hosszúság Ferrótól, which is within the longitude range of this map!

As an aside, had we originally looked at the 6th of our Vas Megye maps, you would find notation "Kel. hosszúság Greenwich-től" at the bottom near the 16° mark and a range of longitude of 15°40' to 17°40' for the map (which, of course, includes the 16° 54' 36" bailout location). The other Vas maps either do not show longitude or fail to include a prime meridian notation; if longitude is shown, you will need to use the information in this article to determine which meridian is used.

Going back to our story, if you carefully measure off the latitude and longitude readings on our original Vas Megye map, you will see that it points to a location just north of Sávár (near the bright red 3 towards the top of the map and right of center). In fact, the location is just west of the towns of F. Paty (Felsö-Paty) and Al. Paty (Alsö-Paty), which joined to form current-day Rabapaty. [Note that if you zoom in on that GoogleMap image of location "47.30N 16.91E" it will show it is just west of Rabapaty, which should be of no surprise.] I have marked the bailout location with a red star in the map clip below. Also, I've circled in red the locations that were mentioned here and in the original article.



Also on the map to the northwest of the bailout location can be seen Köszeg and Bük (which was two villages then, Felsö- and Alsö-Bük), as well as Csepreg, which was mentioned but did not show on the GoogleMap above. All three of these were mentioned as places where airplanes crashed. To the northeast of the bailout location can be seen Beled and Kenyeri. The other mentioned locations were further north in Sopron Megye, so do not appear on this map.

Below, however, is an extract from the corresponding 1897 Sopron Megye map.


 
On this clip, Köszeg, Csepreg and Bük are off the lower left corner and the bailout location is a substantial distance straight south of Iván (which is near the bottom center of this map). The news articles mention that planes also crashed at Röjtök and Csapod; both are circled above. Lastly, airmen were captured at Iván, Újkér and Felsöszopor (lower left) as well as Csapod and Esterháza (Fertö-Szent-Miklós). If, indeed, Jim's uncle drifted further than his fellow airmen, then perhaps he was one of those who landed near these more northern villages... but I doubt we will ever know.



Instead, I hope that you have learned a little more about the map resources we have on our website, the need to pay attention to prime meridian notations on old maps, and the variations in village names that affect both Burgenland and nearby Hungarian villages... and, maybe, that you enjoyed reading this story again!