They would be taken by train later that day, they were told, to a special camp in an isolated area in the center of the country where they would be quarantined for two weeks and then kept under guard for the remainder of the war. Within an hour after the Americans touched down in Switzerland, armed guards took Culler’s crew and the other American crews that landed at Dubendorf that afternoon to a large auditorium, where Swiss officials briefed them on the conditions of their confinement. The story of these fliers is one of the darker secrets of World War II.
In the last two years of the war, the Swiss threw 187 American airmen into one of the most abhorrent prison compounds in Europe, a punishment camp run by a Nazi sympathizer. In all, the Swiss attacked at least 21 of the 168 American bombers that intentionally landed in the country, even though most of them showed unmistakable signs of combat damage or distress.īy the end of the summer of 1944, more than 1,000 American fliers would be in Swiss hands, held under military guard and forbidden from leaving the country for the duration of the war. Over the course of the war, the Swiss would kill at least 20 Royal Air Force and 16 American airmen and injure a large number of others. Culler saw several of these other bombers arrive in Dubendorf, and all of them, he later recalled, “were in bad shape.” Although he did not know it, Swiss pilots and anti-aircraft gunners had fired on some of them. On that day, March 18, 1944, 15 other American bombers landed safely or crash-landed in Switzerland. Although officially neutral during the war, Switzerland was economically dependent on Germany and totally surrounded by Axis-controlled nations, a reality that colored the experiences of Culler and other downed American airmen there. “It didn’t look like a friendly place to me.” “With a Swiss rifle pointed to my head and three soldiers holding me down, I looked around and saw Swiss guards with rifles pointed at all of us,” he recalled. He was about to jump from the plane when a strong hand grabbed hold of one of his feet and pulled him to the ground. It touched down at Dubendorf, just outside Zurich, and the crew exited, with Culler going last. One of them made radio contact with Hell’s Kitchen and ordered Telford to land the B-24 or they would shoot it down. Swiss pilots were flying the German-built planes. But after Pearl Harbor, Culler had decided that his duty to his country preceded his vow of nonviolence and, not yet 18, he persuaded his anguished mother to sign his enlistment papers.Īs Culler and his fellow gunners prepared to open up on the fighters, Lieutenant Telford called out over the intercom that they had Swiss markings-two white crosses-on their sides. His widowed mother, a devout Quaker, had raised him as a pacifist. His gun turret was not functioning properly, and he hated aerial combat. A small-town Indiana boy, Sergeant Culler was scared. Telford told his crew he was going to try to land somewhere in neutral Switzerland.Īs Hell’s Kitchen approached the Swiss border, 19-year-old flight engineer Daniel Culler, flying his 25th and final mission, spotted four Me-109s closing in on them. Dropping out of formation, Lieutenant George D. The plane was 1,000 miles from its air base in East Anglia, with no chance of making it back.
The B-24 Liberator of the Eighth Air Force’s 44th Bomb Group had run into some exploding flak over Friedrichshafen, on the German side of Lake Constance, and was down to two engines, with gas gushing from the left wing tanks. airman found unexpected torment when he was captured by the neutral Swiss.
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