Wreckage of Soviet WWII fighter plane and pilot’s personal items found buried underground in Hungary

The wreckage of a Soviet plane dating from World War II has been discovered in the Hungarian countryside, along with some of its pilot’s personal items, according to the Hungarian Military History Museum and local media.

Excavations have unearthed the Soviet Yakovlev Yak-1 fighter jet about 17 feet underground in the village of Törtel in central Hungary, located about 50 miles southeast of Budapest, museum officials said. István Kocsis, a member of the research association that carried out the investigation into the wreck, said excavations in the area began in September.

Several parts of the plane were relatively intact when archaeologists recovered them from the crash site. The relics included what officials identified as a piece of the Red Star insignia printed on all Soviet military property at the time, which they said was “in relatively good condition.”

Part of the plane’s fuselage was also found, displaying the plane’s side number, as well as the pilot’s personal effects. Among them was a book containing the pilot’s signature, which museum experts are now working to restore, the museum said.

Some of the best-preserved pieces of the wreck will be put on display by the military museum, once its archeology department completes restoration procedures and records observations of their sightings.

Although scientists and archaeologists are still working to learn more about the decades-old debris, they were able to trace the wreckage to a particular wartime accident that occurred in November 1944, local Hungarian media reported. While they clashed over the subject of Törtel, the aerial duel of German lieutenant Peter Düttmann and Soviet lieutenant Alexander Semyonovich Andrianov ended with Düttmann shooting down the Soviet plane. Although Andrianov escaped by parachute, he later became a prisoner of war, according to the Hungary Today news site.