The Madrid mountains were the scene of a milestone in world aviation. In 1937 a Soviet army plane shot down, for the first time in history, a nazi plane at night, something unheard of considering that they did not have radars to locate it. Now, an investigation has managed to find the exact place of impact.

The events took place on July 25, 1937, when a Nazi army plane flew over the Madrid mountains after participating in the battle of Brunete. With the help of the full moon, which makes the device shine, a Soviet army plane gets behind the Nazi and shoots him down.

It happened up there, it was the first nighttime shooting down of an airplane in combat since 1918. “The shooting down of a German plane had enormous symbolic weight”explains Luis A. Ruiz Casero, co-director of the archaeological investigation Audema SA

Now, thanks to the Ávila military archive, they discovered the coordinates and there they have located the remains of said plane. Specifically, among the objects found are rusty remains of the fuselage, a bullet from the German army and a small dog, money that the crew members were carrying.

Apparently, the plane approached the first line asking where Salamanca, capital of the rebels, was. “They thought they were in Francoist territory”indicates Luis A. Ruiz Casero.

Although the demolition occurred on top of the mountain, it was below that the Nazi government installed a tombstone in honor of the deceaseda sheet that today rests in the Almudena cemetery, where a pantheon was erected in 1942. However, in 2017 the German government decided to dismantle it.

“It was a monument with Nazi symbols, with a frieze full of swastikas and with the German aviation eagle“, reveals the co-director of the archaeological investigation Audema SA

At the scene of the accident, the tombstone disappeared and someone left a rock in its place, the only witness to a key night in history of military aviation.