The Wilmington Morning Star

Eyewitness Says Plane Under Fire Falls In Column Of Smoke; 2 Fighter Craft Attack CANNON ALSO HEARD

Two Occupants Take To Parachutes; Seem To Land Safely

TRIESTE, Aug. 19.-(AP)--

An American transport plane was missing today after reporting it was under tracer bullet and anti-aircraft fire somewhere near the Yugoslav frontier, just 10 days after a similar plane was machine-gunned and forced down by Marshal Tito's fighters.

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia, Aug. 19.-(P)-A reliable eyewitness said tonight, 10 hours after a missing U. S. transport plane reported it was under fire over Yugoslavia, that he saw two Yugoslav fighter craft shoot down a large transport over the Julian Alps southwest of Klagenfurt, Austria.

(Klagenfurt is 14 miles north of the Yugoslav border. This dispatch did not specify whether the attack occurred over Austrian or Yugoslav territory.)

Two occupants parachuted from the plummeting plane, apparently to safety, the eyewitness, who asked that his name not be used, told an Associated Press correspondent.

According to the witness' story, "a large plane, flying a Southeastern course over the Julian Alps at 9:15 a. m.," was seen to spiral to the ground in a column of black smoke, after being "attacked by two Yugoslav fighter planes."

'Four or five cannon shots were heard from the ground near the

Yugoslav summer resort of Bled," he added.

Marshal Tito, premier of Yugoslavia, was reported to have been at his summer residence at Bled at the time the plane was shot down. It was learned that Tito was seen in Bled on Sunday.

(A telephoned report received in Vienna said the airport at Udine, Italy, destination of the plane, picked up a radio call from the pilot saying he was under attack by a fighter plane in the Klagenfurt corridor just north of Yugoslavia.)

(Allied headquarters in Caserta said the radio of the missing plane went dead shortly after the message was received. By afternoon there still was no word of the European Air Transport Service C-47, which was on a routine run from Vienna to Udine.)

Persons on the ground, the eyewitness said, first heard the cannon shots and then saw a huge column of smoke appear in the sky as the transport spiraled to the ground.

The area where the plane was seen to fall is about 25 miles from the spot where the U. S. C-47, also on the Vienna-Udine run, was forced to land under gunfire on Aug. 9.

"We saw fighter planes attack and we saw the transport plane spiral down in a column of smoke and disappear into the mountains," the witness said. "Then we saw a big column of black smoke appear, indicating that the plane had exploded."

The eyewitness said he witnessed the attack and crash while he was in the town of Bohinj Bistrica.