For Volendammer Nico Kwakman it feels like he is closing a chapter. The war expert and former soldier was approached almost thirty years ago by the fishermen of cutter VD64, who had come across a wreck during their work and wondered what exactly they had found.
Kwakman dived into the IJsselmeer and soon noticed that it was an English war plane. “We saw something on the sonar, something big on the bottom,” the Volendammer begins. “I immediately put on a diving suit, because I was a diver in the army. I only had a foot of visibility, but I hit my head on an airplane propeller that was hanging above me like a shadow. Then I thought: hey, this is a plane.”
Human remains
“The plane was still completely intact,” he continues. “There were tools, shoes. I immediately thought: there are still people in here. There is no other way.”
That suspicion turned out to be correct. The aircraft was recovered in 2023, after which Johan Graas, researcher at the Aircraft Recovery Group (ARG) in Heemskerk, identified the bodies of three crew members who had been missing since the war: British aviators Raymond Moore, Arthur Smart and Charles Sprack.
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