On May 30, 1944, around 1 a.m., a Vickers Wellington aircraft was shot at by a German night fighter – after the bombing of the Fels am Wagram airfield. On board are Pilot Flight Officer Bruce Keen, Brian Halligan, Edward Yeo, Ken Todd and Jim Gallagher. The English night fighter crashes burning in Grünsbach. This crew manages to escape with parachutes, but is captured. After the war they can return home.
The Australian Bruce Keen now has a grandson, Patrick Keen. He lives in New South Wales and is currently traveling through Europe with his partner Mimi Dalton. He also stopped in Pielachtal and paid a spontaneous visit to the Hofstetten-Grünau Station Museum. The two were lucky because local historians Gerhard Hager and Erich Zichtl happened to have time for a museum tour.
Patrick Keen was amazed that the fate of this aircraft crew can be read in detail in the station museum. A few parts of the crashed aircraft are also on display. Together with Zichtl and Hager, Keen and Dalton also visited the plane crash site in Grünsbach. The night bomber hit the ground in a meadow near the Scholze-Simmel family’s Schagerl farm. Patrick Keen was surprised and impressed by all the information he saw and heard.
The two local historians Gerhard Hager and Erich Zichtl were very pleased about the surprise visit from Australia and the opportunity to present the train station museum to an international audience.
