Crash site Rijnvis
Death and new life...
It was Sunday, February 25, 1945. Around noon, the anti-aircraft guns in Nunspeet targeted a low-flying fighter plane. The plane was hit and crashed into a plot of farmland between Rijnvis and Vreeweg. The land was owned by Gerrit Vos, who lived at Rijnvis 30.
It was a huge explosion; the debris was scattered everywhere. The burning plane had hit the ground head-on. The pilot had tried to jump out of the burning plane, but he couldn’t because it was already flying too low. He lay next to the plane, tangled in the ropes of his unfolded parachute. A dog licked the blood. The animal was kicked. The air raid protection recorded 12:12 as the time of the crash.
At 12:20, the Ortskommandantur in Harderwijk was alerted by telephone and at 12:22, the mayor. The police were quickly present. The plane was guarded by two German soldiers. The soldiers had no view of the plane from Vos’s farm, but they did from Aart Kroneman’s house. So the two German soldiers sat there by the stove, keeping watch. In the evening there was a problem.
Kroneman’s wife was going to give birth to her eighth child. The midwife had little sympathy for the two soldiers and sent them outside. At four o’clock in the morning, Aart Kroneman junior was born. That Monday morning, father Aart Kroneman went to the town hall to report the birth. He forgot to take the marriage certificate with him. When this was discovered at home, the two German soldiers offered to bring it after Aart on their motorcycle. They stopped him on the Laan in Nunspeet. Nunspeet residents who saw this drew the conclusion: Aart Kroneman was being arrested by the Germans. But this time the Germans were only helpful.
Wheelbarrow with tail wheel
The police reported that the pilot was English. But that turned out to be incorrect. It was an American: First Lieutenant Horace B. Smith (21 years old), originally from Altoona in the state of Pennsylvania. He was buried in the Nunspeet cemetery with the other soldiers who had previously died in the area of Nunspeet.
After the war, the body was transferred to the American cemetery in Neuville-en-Condroz in the Ardennes in Belgium. Smith’s plane was a P-51 Mustang based at Kingscliffe Northants in England. The remains of the plane remained on Vos’s field for a long time.
But in April the land had to be worked and the plane was towed to the yard. The machine gun remained on the rabbit hutch for a long time and the tail wheel was used as a wheel for the wheelbarrow. It now hangs on a wall in a living room. Source: among others Elspeet Historie