The work on the dyke reinforcement just below Volendam stopped after a warning from Volendammer Nico Kwakman. According to new research, it is possible that there are now one or more bombs from the Second World War.
Nico Kwakman has been researching 28 yearsas an amateur, to combat aircraft that yielded a battle around the Markermeer during the Second World War. He now warns of potentially dumped bombs along the dike. “On March 26, 1942, an English bomber crashed after a fight with a German night hunter,” says Kwakman.
The crew is salvaged and has a monument in Monnickendam. What happened to the bomb load is unknown. The device is said to have had nine bombs on board, ranging from very heavy specimens (a 1000-pounds) to lighter variants (500 and 250-ponders). The pilot may have dumped the bombs as a precaution, somewhere between Volendam and Monnickendam.
Slide the photo below to the left and right and see the route that the bomber flew. The blue cross indicates the place where the bombs are possible.
The Hollands Noorderkwartier Water Board (HHNK) takes the report of possible bombs seriously and, as a precaution, has the excavation work at the location that Kwakman indicates. “With us, safety is paramount and that is why we are going to investigate the place again,” says a spokesperson.
An earlier study that the HHNK had carried out showed that the location was not a risk area. For the time being, the HHNK has moved the work on the dike a few hundred meters.
Kwakman understands that the place is now being seen as a risk area. “A lot is still written about the war and crashed planes,” he says,Referring to historian Theo Boiten. As a hobby researcher, Nico reads all his books and discovered the trail of the disappeared bombs. “If you miss a book, then you don’t know.”
Swimming between the bombs
When Nico’s story in the Local newspaper appeareda bell rang with Volendammer Jan Veerman Junior. “My father always told me that he swam there as a 13-year-old boy,” says Jan. The place that his father described corresponds to the location that Nico designates. “According to my father, you could see the tail pieces of the bombs standing above water.”
Monument for killed crew in Monnickendam.
His father, Jan Veerman Sr., told the police as a boy, but he labeled it as bad boys stories. “But my father really wasn’t like that,” says Jan Veerman Jr. “My father was not someone who would come up with this for a tough story.”
Nobody knows whether the bombs have been removed over time or have been sinked into the bottom. The research of the HHNK into the possible bombs has just started. When it is completed, it is not yet possible to say.