Lost for Decades: The WWII Pilot Found Hanging in a Tree

While chasing down obscure clues about “Bella in the Wych Elm,” I stumbled across a Quora thread with an eerie, specific claim: that the skeleton of a German Luftwaffe pilot—shot down over Kent during the war—was discovered still hanging from his parachute in a tree… over 30 years later.

… A German fighter pilot was shot down over Kent (England). He parachuted out successfully but sadly his luck ran out when he landed in a tree and broke his neck. The tree was next to a railway bridge of a mainline railway to London. So the pilot is now hanging in the tree dead, but no one found his remains until the mid 1970’s. He was only discovered when, during the winter, a railway platelayer looked up and saw something unusual. He climbed the embankment and then the tree where he found a skeleton in a worn German Luftwaffe black jacket and the remains of a parachute. The authorities were informed and his remains were removed 30 odd years after his death. The German authorities took the remains and he received a proper funeral in Germany. [Mike Johnson, 2019 Quora comment – edited for grammar and clarity]

The story piqued my interest but also raised several questions. Would a German Luftwaffe pilot have been wearing a black leather jacket and not a standard beige flying suit? Wouldn’t his remains have been interred at the German Soldatenfriedhof in Cannock Chase, rather than being repatriated to Germany? I’ve never come across anything even remotely matching this story, which doesn’t mean it isn’t true. I would just need more corroboration: a newspaper article, an RAF file, a police report, an eyewitness statement. I began to wonder if the Quora tale was a garbled retelling of another wartime event—perhaps one with just enough truth to survive in fragments.

As it turns out, there are a few superficially similar cases that are worth examining.

Brighton, 1944: Dead Pilot in a Tree

On 19th April, 1944, a German Messerschmitt was hit by flak over London and tried to return to base. It was spotted by a Mosquito crew near Brighton who opened fire, causing the Messerschmitt to burst into flames and crash in St. Nicholas Churchyard in Brighton. The pilot and radio operator bailed out, but both were killed.

The 24-year-old pilot, Hauptmann Richard Pahl was a highly decorated aviator who had been wounded three times and awarded the Iron Cross First Class, and a medal for service in the Crimea. Pahl was found hanging from his parachute in a tree near 5 Dyke Road in Brighton. Accounts differ—some report he had suffered a shrapnel wound to the head, while others say he was burned. In either case, Pahl was found quickly and there was no mystery about his death. His remains were buried at Brighton Borough Cemetery, Bear Road, where they remain to this day.

The 24-year-old wireless operator, Feldwebel Wilhelm Schuberth, bailed out over the sea and drowned. His body washed up on 20 April 1944 near Friston. He was buried in the local cemetery but was later exhumed and reinterred in the German Soldtatenfriedhof at Cannock Chase.

Aside from the fact that a dead pilot was found in a tree, there is little to connect this event to the Quora story. Hauptmann Pahl was found almost immediately after the crash, his identity was confirmed and his burial was well-documented. But it wouldn’t take much for the story to find new life in a pub. “Did you hear!… Can you imagine… what if he’d landed in a tree out in the woods… what if he wasn’t found for decades…” It wouldn’t take much. With each retelling, the story grew taller.

Papua New Guinea, 2008: Parachutist in the Jungle

Not all dead-pilot-in-a-tree stories involve actual pilots—or actual bodies. Consider the case from Papua New Guinea in 2008. Hikers on the famous Kokoda Track looked up into jungle canopy and stopped in shock. They could clearly see the moss-covered remains of a parachutist hanging from a tree—the goggles, the parachute harness, the chute cables. Their skin crawled. They took photos and when they reached civilization, they reported their discovery to the authorities. The story hit the newspapers with a bang, and speculation swirled around who the parachutist could be, since several aircrew had gone missing in the area during the war. Was he Japanese? Australian? American? The Australian military sent a team to investigate. Their findings were deflating. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, what looked like a body was, in reality, a broken branch held up by a bundle of moss-covered vines.

Apart from the initial report—a wartime parachutist discovered decades later, hanging in a tree—this case shares little with the Quora story. In any event, the “parachutist” in Papua New Guinea turned out to be a tree branch. There was no body. There was no parachutist. There were just vines and wishful thinking.

Lindau, 1945: Buried by the Forest

On 16 April, 1945, 21-year-old Lt. William Gray of the USAF was on a dive-bombing mission in his single-seater aircraft when his plane clipped a tree and crashed into the woods near Lindau. In 1948, the crash site was visited, and the serial numbers on the recovered machine guns were matched to Gray’s aircraft. But his remains were never found.

In 2012, investigators excavated the site and discovered Gray’s bones embedded in the roots of a tree that had grown over the wreckage. So, not quite a pilot in a tree, but rather a pilot under a tree.

A True Story?

The Quora story shared by Mark Johnson—of a Luftwaffe pilot found decades later still hanging by his parachute in a tree along a railway embankment—would be amazing, if it were true. Even today, the discovery of long-missing aircrew makes headlines. But after a thorough search of the British Newspaper Archives (1965–1980), I’ve found nothing even remotely similar.

Is the Quora tale stitched together from snippets of truth, a few dashes of speculation, and some faulty memories? Possibly. And until something more solid shows up, it remains an intriguing mystery.

More Information on Pahl and Schuberth

The Brighton Mortiquarian – Richard Pahl and the Baby Blitz
Aircrew Remembered Society – Page on Pahl and Schuberth
Find-a-Grave – Wilhelm Schuberth
Find-a-Grave – Richard Pahl