Aßling railway accident
The railway accident Aßling was a rear-end collision , which on 16 July 1945, at about 21:40 on the Munich-Rosenheim railway between the stations of Aßling and Grafing at Elkofen occurred at km 43.2. At least 102 people died.
Starting position
Due to the war , the railway systems in Germany were still badly damaged in the summer of 1945, automatic train protection only worked partially and railway operations were improvised. The trains then drove with written travel orders based on agreements made by the neighboring dispatcher . For the section of the route on which the accident then occurred, an American transport officer was working as a dispatcher in the signal box of the Aßling station (Oberbay) .
On the day of the accident, a train occupied by around 1200 released prisoners of war returning to the Rhineland and Westphalia was en route from Rosenheim to Munich . The train consisted of older passenger cars with a wooden body. His locomotive , one of the E 75 series , got stuck on the open line between Aßling (Oberbay) and Grafing Bahnhof due to machine damage .
This first train was followed by a freight train of the US Army , with tanks loaded and the electric locomotive E 94 159 drawn.
the accident
The transport officer in the signal box in Aßling (Oberbay) had forgotten the passenger train that should have passed through Aßling first. Rather, he released the route for the following freight train. This drove onto the broken down passenger train from behind.
consequences
A large part of the wooden passenger car was destroyed by the impact. The exact number of victims is unknown and varies - depending on the source - between 102 and 110 killed passengers , including a victim on the US side, a GI who was a member of the security team.
memorial
96 victims of the accident were buried in Oberelkofen , about three kilometers from the site of the accident, on a war cemetery. 4 of the 96 victims of the train accident buried there could no longer be identified. A total of 113 victims of the Second World War rest there . A memorial was erected there in 1962 and inaugurated on May 27 of the same year.
literature
- Hans Lebmeier: Aßling on the way into the 20th century. Geiger, Horb am Neckar 1995, ISBN 3-89570-069-X , pp. 339-343.
- Hans-Joachim Ritzau, Jürgen Höstel: The catastrophe scenes of the present = railway accidents in Germany Bd. 2. Pürgen 1983. ISBN 3-921304-50-4 , p. 15f.
Web links
- NN: History of the E94 .
- The last dead of World War II .
- 50 years of the war cemetery in Oberelkofen .
- Oberelkofen war cemetery .
- Train accident in Oberelkofen. A battlefield of tanks and dead. Süddeutsche Zeitung , May 28, 2015
- Aßling train accident. Deadly homecoming. Bavaria 2 , July 19, 2015
- The Aßling train accident. Death on the way to freedom. ( Memento from July 15, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Bayerischer Rundfunk , July 12, 2015
- Railway accident between Aßling and Elkofen on July 16, 1945 at 9:40 p.m. at kilometer 43 / 4-5 . VG-Nachrichten Aßling, July 2020.
- Aßling train accident with over 100 victims: the tragic death of those returning from the war in 1945 . Münchner Merkur, July 16, 2020.
Individual evidence
- ^ Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge: 50 years of war gravesites in Oberelkofen
Coordinates: 47 ° 58 ′ 21.7 ″ N , 12 ° 0 ′ 24.7 ″ E