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School project leads to sensational find of German WWII aircraft in Jutland
Christian Wenande
March 7th, 2017
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Farmer uncovers buried ME 109 Messerschmitt including pilot remains
The ME109 pilot has now been positively identified (photo: German Federal Archives)
A Danish farmer and his son have made one of the more sensational discoveries in recent times after finding the remains of a German WWII aircraft buried in one of their fields.
The find, which also included the remains of the dead pilot and ammunition, was made using a metal detector near Aabybro in north Jutland.
Farmer Klaus Kristiansen said that his grandfather had told him that a German plane had crashed in a field behind the farm during World War II. Kristiansen’s grandfather had told him that the Germans had cordoned off the area following the crash and removed the plane, but the farmer thought it would be fun to look for debris from the crash as part of his son’s school project.
“We tried to carefully dig down with a trencher and more and more bits were revealed,” Kristiansen told DR P4 Nordjylland.
“Over the weekend we tried to dig down a little further and the further we got, the more small bits of debris we found.”
READ MORE: Oldest Enigma machine discovered in Denmark
Human remains
Finally, they found a nearly complete part of the engine, but when they found human bone remains, they contacted the authorities.
The police and bomb-removal squad then turned up, as did representatives from the German Embassy after the farmer found documents in the pocket of some clothing they uncovered.
The aircraft, which was a ME 109 Messerschmitt fighter (considered one of the key aircraft of the Luftwaffe fighting force in WWII), was found under a completely level grass field used for grazing cows.
“We’ve used it for grazing for 20-30 years and had no clue that it hid that secret,” said Kristiansen.
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