"My Best Bette" took off from Lavenham, England to bomb Parchim and its Me262s,but when in route, they were rammed by a ME 109. This was 7 April 1945, the day the German fighters went ramming American planes. Referred to as the "Last Flight of the Luftwaffe"
They made a forced landing at an airfield which turned out to be St Trond Belgium
Upon examining the plane they saw the movable rudder was completely gone and the vertical stabilizer was damaged. The right horizontal stabilizer was reduced to less than one third its size while the left and right elevators were completely gone. The tail of the fuselage was crushed including the tail turret. The tip of a ME-109 wing was embedded in the fuselage, but they removed the wing tip and took it home with them as a souvenir. [NOTE-A piece of the ME-109 wing section is on display at the Eighth Air Force Museum in Savannah, Georgia.]
Here is the story I found on Facebook that had me all excited to share with you, and I finally found the source on the internet about this incident is this next paragraph mentioned http://home.earthlink.net/~tom.mccrary/TargetParchim-RammedOverGermany.htm
They found another, old, camouflaged B-17 parked under trees at the airfield edge. It seemed serviceable and despite some Balkenkreuz and Swastikas they commandeered it. It was in rough shape, pretty beat up, but no FLAK holes, after inspecting it they ran up the engines from a jeep generator then took off and flew back to Lavenham air base in England.
Later while talking to the Squadron Commander, they gave a short version of the events of the day, and were made aware that they wouldn't be flying more missions, the luck of the "My Best Bette" crew seemed to be wearing thin after 28 missions and two crash landings as well as returning 5 times on two engines, so he was sending them home. Wentz got back to the United States the day Japan surrendered, ending World War II.
The part of the story about the Nazi B-17 is flat refuted by http://forum.12oclockhigh.net/showthread.php?t=4198 which says he landed in St Trond airfield in Belgium. Flew a B-17 from St Trond to Merville (France), and then another from Merville to Honington (England). Well, it was a good story... too bad the intriguing part about bringing back a KG 200 Nazi B17. http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2015/12/approximately-40-b-17s-were-repaired.html
If it sounds too good to be true... it probably is
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2008/08/budd_wentz_and_the_great_big_w.html for all of the story about getting rammed mid air.
My Best Bette pilot W. Budd Wentz, of Shaker Heights, recalls the time when a German fighter rammed his bomber on a mission during World War II.
https://sites.google.com/site/justresults2/history/wentz-biography
the collision part of the story is told at the 31 minute 45 second mark of this video, but not them finding the Nazi B17, and flyling it back
https://www.facebook.com/groups/103715686627022/permalink/248246172173972/ was where the BS story about them finding and flying back a KG 200 B17 came from
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