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The Crash

The affair began with a mistake made by the German aviator Major Erich Hoenmanns, the fifty-two year old airbase commander at Loddenheide airport, near Münster. On the morning of 10 January, he had been flying a Messerschmitt Bf 108 Taifun, a plane used for reconnaissance, liaison, and other miscellaneous roles, from Loddenheide to Cologne when he lost his way, extensive low fogbanks obscuring his view of the landscape. While searching for the River Rhine, which, he hoped, would enable him to regain his bearings, changing course he flew too far west, having already crossed the frozen over and indistinguishable Rhine, and ended up circling Vucht near the River Meuse, at this point the border river between Belgium and The Netherlands. Read full entry

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