For a crippled American bomber over southern Germany in 1944, Switzerland was often the nearest safe ground. Between August 1943 and April 1945, 166 US bombers came down there. Their crews were safe from the war, but not free: under international law, a neutral country had to intern them until the fighting ended.

The story is getting fresh attention in Switzerland this year, with a book by historian Jürg Flückiger, features on Swiss television and a September 2026 article on the Swiss National Museum’s blog. It is a story of ski resorts and escape lines, but also of a punishment camp that the United States would later treat as a prisoner-of-war camp.

Why the Bombers Came

The first American bomber to land was the B-24 “Death Dealer”, which came down near Wil on 13 August 1943; its crew set it on fire. As the Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces struck targets around Lake Constance, Munich and Augsburg, damaged aircraft that could not make it back to England or Italy turned south. On 18 March 1944 alone, after a raid on Friedrichshafen, at least 16 bombers came down in Switzerland, twelve of them landing at Dübendorf near Zurich. A 15-year-old spectator was killed by a power line one of them tore down.

Switzerland did not simply wave them in. Swiss fighters and flak defended the country’s airspace against both sides, and from April 1944 General Henri Guisan ordered fire on any intruding aircraft not clearly in distress. On 1 October 1943 Swiss flak shot down two B-17s, killing 13 of their 21 crew. On 5 September 1944, US P-51s escorting a damaged bomber shot down a Swiss Bf 109 and killed its pilot.

Internees in Ski Resorts

According to the Swiss National Museum, 1,511 American bomber crew arrived alive. The 597 officers were sent to Davos and the 914 enlisted men to Adelboden or Wengen. Life there was far better than in a German camp: they lived in hotels, skied and met local people. In Adelboden, British and American internees donated the entrance gate of the village church in 1945, and their spending on ski tickets helped pay for a ski lift.

But they were not allowed to leave, and most did not want to sit out the war. 947 tried to escape and 763 made it, often helped by a covert network run by the US military attaché Barnwell Legge and the OSS station of Allen Dulles in Bern.

Wauwilermoos

Those caught escaping were punished, and the worst place to be sent was Wauwilermoos, a camp in the moorland of the canton of Lucerne. Its commandant, Captain André Béguin, was a Swiss Nazi sympathiser who signed letters “Heil Hitler”. About 180 to 190 American airmen were held there, many for months in crowded, filthy barracks, although the Geneva Convention limited disciplinary punishment to 30 days. Béguin was convicted by a Swiss military court in 1946, though for fraud and other offences rather than for his treatment of prisoners.

Decades later the United States recognised them. A change in US law opened the Prisoner of War Medal to the Wauwilermoos internees, and on 30 April 2014 the US Air Force honoured 143 of them at the Pentagon, most posthumously. In 1995 Swiss President Kaspar Villiger had already apologised personally to Dan Culler, a B-24 gunner who had been abused at the camp.

Bombs on Switzerland

The relationship went both ways. On 1 April 1944 American bombers aiming for Ludwigshafen bombed Schaffhausen by mistake, killing 40 people. Zurich and Basel were hit on 4 March 1945. In all, about 70 mistaken bombings killed 84 people in Switzerland, and in 1949 the US agreed to pay just over 62 million Swiss francs in compensation. An exhibition on the Schaffhausen bombing is running at the town’s Museum im Zeughaus this season.

Remembering Them

61 American airmen died in Switzerland during the war, shot down or killed in crashes and accidents, and were buried at a US military cemetery in Münsingen before being repatriated. Memorials stand in Davos and Adelboden, and a plaque has marked Wauwilermoos since 2015.

Sources: Swiss National Museum blog (29 September 2026); Jürg Flückiger, Gefangene Befreier (NZZ Libro, 2025); SRF (February and July 2026; “Der Archivar”, 2015); swissinfo; US Air Force (2004 and 2014); US National Archives Prologue blog (2021); HistoryNet (Donald L. Miller); 303rd Bomb Group archive; Museum im Zeughaus Schaffhausen; Wikipedia, Wauwilermoos internment camp and Aerial incidents in Switzerland in World War II