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[Martin X. Moleski, SJ]

From an e-mail:

On 10/7/2010 4:10 PM, Charles "Butch" Rogers wrote:

Hello: My name is Charles Rogers I am an avid aviation enthusiast, in particular WWII aircraft. I have a website of my experience of my tour in Germany in the early 70's. I was interested in the article on the underground hangers of Finthen AAF as we had heard that there were old hangers there, but I never saw them. I received an e-mail from a gentleman in Canada and he relayed the webpage of the memoires of a gentleman that spent some time in Germany in 1955. I have added the website of his adventures according to him, and was wondering if this had been investigated, and was there anything to this.

http://web.archive.org/web/20041223165236/www.pinetreeline.org/giebelstadt/gieb-other/other/ogieb-5.html

The story is by a Wayne Grover. Thank You in advance.

Charles V. Rogers Jr.
webmaster 295th Avn Co.

Charles,

I don't know enough about TIGHAR's Operation Sepulchre to say
whether TIGHAR has investigated Grover's story:

"Giebelstadt had an extensive underground facility that no one had yet
discovered until I and two friends located one of the entrances after we
dug out an old German motor pool building and found a concrete ramp that
disappeared into the earth. Over the course of a few weeks, we found an
immense amount of Luftwaffe supplies. Left untouched for 11 years. We
found radial aircraft engines on mounts, aircraft parts including ME-109
wing guns, tools, coveralls, boots, racks of rifles and best of all a
full box of mixed P-38 pistols and the so called 9mm Lugars. There was
still canned food as well, most of which had ruptured. After we secured
the finds we wanted to keep, we notified the base authorities and were
ordered never to go back into the immense facility. Somewhat later, I
found a huge metal door, covered with growing grass and a smaller door
within it. It led to a huge bomb storage area. I left that one alone and
notified the base commander."

The Operation Sepulchre page does ask for underground hangar stories,
so yours qualifies:

https://tighar.org/Projects/Opsep.html

Thanks for passing it on!