Telegram from Guernica

[Sal Williams]

I read this book by Nicholas Rankin about the life of George Steer war correspondant who covered the Ethiopia and Spanish Civil War campaigns among others.

This passage was interesting and almost unbelievable to me...

On Sunday,18 April 1937 the third air raid of the day on Bilbao took Steer out of the Torrontegui Hotel to see what was going on. Four Russian fighters were chasing three Dornier 17's, new nazi fast bombers nicknamed 'flying pencils'. "Suddenly across the hill of bego?a in front of me fell a line of bombs at top speed. Lightning, thunder,thunder,lightning,prolonged thunder and smoke". One of the bombers was shot down, and Steer went out to Galdakano to see where it had crashed.

The pilot, a 27 year old German named Hans Sobotka, was half burned, and his arms were still raised across his face from the last moment before he had gone into the hillside. The 2 other Germans had jumped from the Dornier, but thier parachutes had not had time to open; they had hit the river Nervion so hard they had died of shock. One corpse was unusual;The plucked eyebrows, lipsticked mouth and manicured pointed fingernails on fine white hands appeared to show the Germans were using women as war pilots;but the doctors at the Sanidad Militar in Bilbao were men of the world. They undressed the corpse and scrutinized it. The armpit hair had been plucked and it wore feminine pink silk underwear, but it was, biologicaly,a man. The underwear was hung on exhibition in the Basque departmrnt of defense, and the doctors jotted it downin thier casebooks as'one of the queerer incidents of the Civil War'.

This seems pretty hard to believe that a german could go up in a bomber with a crew in drag! What do you think? My books are packed away at the moment but maybe Jacques can tell us who was shot down that day and died. I would like to know if we have at least a match on that day with the loss of 3 crew.

Edited June 3, 2006 by Sal Williams

[Bob Hunter]

Now, that will be an interesting research project. I have heard rumors and speculation but nothing substantiated about behavior like this within the Luftwaffe.

[Jacques]

looks odd !!!! May be a fetichist

[Scott]

Now THAT is a wierd one

Scott

[Sal Williams]

Ok I found my books and on the day in question the pilot is indeed noted as being Hans Sobotka of K/88.

That means our cross dressing suspect is either Otto Hoffmeister or Friedrich Mueller.

So that would mean that the other 2 would have to be aware of the 1 deviant in the plane. Seems odd to me that in 1937 they would be so tolerant of this and not only not report him but be willing to trust him with thier lives

as they say on Seinfeld,... "not that there is anything wrong with that

Edited June 5, 2006 by Sal Williams

[francisco v.]

The worst of all was that the family of Hans Sobotka was forbidden to attend to big Legion Condor parade even when his son made the supreme sacrifice, because his father was jew. The fact that he fought for his country in WWI gaining decorations did not help neither.

[Sal Williams]

Francisco, that is very interesting as well as sad. Where did you find that info? Have you heard anything on the story that I found about one of the crew? This sounds like a very interesting story forming up. Do you know the plane numbers etc. that Sobotka was flying that day?

Best, Sal

[francisco v.]

Francisco, that is very interesting as well as sad. Where did you find that info? Have you heard anything on the story that I found about one of the crew? This sounds like a very interesting story forming up. Do you know the plane numbers etc. that Sobotka was flying that day?

Best, Sal

Sal, some time ago a bunch of papers with official correspondence addressed to Edith and Camillo Sobotka, his fathers, as put on sale and sold.

Regarding to the plane flown by Sobotka there are not published info although my researchings points out to the Do-17 number 27-6

Regards

Fran

[Sal Williams]

Fran,

did you purchase those documents? If so can we see them please?

[francisco v.]

Fran,

did you purchase those documents? If so can we see them please?

Hello Sal,

I have not the docs so the scans I can post are of the size in the dealer's web shop