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Downed Berlin Airlift Pilot Assisted By East German Farmer

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    Downed Berlin Airlift Pilot Assisted By East German Farmer

    WHAT TO DO WITH ENEMY PRISONERS?

    Richard Reeves

    BERLIN -- On Sept. 14, 1948, Capt. Kenneth Slaker of Lincoln, Neb., was making his sixth flight as a Berlin Airlift pilot, bringing food and fuel to the World War II enemy capital, which was blockaded on land and on rivers by the army of the Soviet Union. The United States Air Force, along with Great Britain's Royal Air Force, was trying to keep alive more than 2 million people in West Berlin, which was surrounded by East Germany and hundreds of thousands of soldiers of the Red Army.

    "The Russians say they will shoot down any aircraft that strays out of the Berlin air corridor, and that captured airlift pilots will be treated as spies. ... If you should find yourself down in the Soviet Zone, we cannot say that you should turn yourself in, or that you should try to escape. There is no published or firm policy on this, and it would be up to you or your crew as to what action you would want to take."

    Both engines of Slaker's C-47 cut out over East Germany's Harz mountains. He and his co-pilot, Lt. Clarence Steber of Memphis, Tenn., bailed out less a thousand feet above the ground. Slaker landed in a potato field and was unconscious for four or five hours. He heard German voices when he came to at dawn and crawled into a forest. Standing and turning, in great pain, he walked straight into an East German farmer.

    "I'm an American pilot on the airlift," said Slaker, who spoke some German. The German, whose name was Rudolph Schnabel, reached into a coat pocket and showed the pilot the discharge papers he received after two years as a prisoner of war in an American camp outside Kearney, Neb.

    "Americans were good to me," Schnabel said in workable English. "Americans capture me, save my leg." He pulled up his pants to show scars on his leg, which had been put back together in an American field hospital after he was run over by a tank. To make a long story short, Schnabel recruited friends and smuggled Slaker across the border to an American checkpoint in West Berlin.

    To read the remainder of the article go to: http://www.theusdaily.com/articles/v...2&type=Opinion

    #2
    I did a search on Capt. Kenneth Slaker and apparently last year he wrote a book on his experience called, A Military Pilot's Exciting Life and Visit from the Hereafter ISBN: 9781571974891

    "In September 1948, Captain Kenneth Slaker's C-47 supply aircraft crashed into a potato field in the Soviet zone of East Germany. One chapter of ''A Military Pilot''s Exciting Life and Visit from the Hereafter'' is Slaker''s first person account of his harrowing escape through the Iron Curtain. With the help of his Guardian Angel and a German named Rudolph, Captain Slaker survived to tell of his escape-the details of which the U.S. Government classified for over 40 years. The remainder of Slaker''s memoir is composed of an ensemble cast of chapters that all play starring roles in an amazing life. From his bombing missions in World War II, to flying a classified mission with Charles Lindbergh, to meeting his true love and starting his own corporation, ''A Military Pilot''s Exciting Life and Visit from the Hereafter'' is a stimulating account of a truly fulfilled life."
    Last edited by ehrentitle; 06-06-2009, 11:44 AM.

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      #3
      Also here is a link his oral history from the Library of Congress. He talks about his incident parachuting into East Germany during the Airlift about 2/3 of the way through the interview:

      http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/vhp/sto...2001001.57688/

      I also found a exerpt from another book that tsaid that his co-pilot, Lt. Clarence Steber was captured by the Russians but was freed by members of the USMLM who snuck him out of his hospital room.

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