The salvage of a plane wreck

When the Czech Republic was occupied by the Germans, many Czechs fled to England to join the fight for a free Europe from there. On the night of June 22, 1941, a Vickers Wellington type bomber took off to carry out a bombing attack on Bremen, with six Czech crew members on board.

On the way back to its home base in England, the plane was shot at by a German night fighter, after which it crashed burning on a plot of land on Canal Road.

It was later revealed that only the pilot had survived the crash with the help of his parachute. He did not get far, had his leg broken and was captured by the Germans. His name: Vilem Bufka. No trace of the other five.

Probably because the plane had drilled itself meters deep into the ground. Bufka was released after the war and died in 1967. It is almost certain that the five others are still in the wreckage. It is important that they be recovered and identified, also out of respect for the next of kin.

Team of defense

A defense team led the salvage operation, conducted by two certified civil engineering contractors: Bodac and Van Schie. Bodac, an explosives detection specialist, mainly did the excavation. Van Schie provided transportation from the salvage site to the processing site, and later transportation of the sieved soil to its own soil bank in Mijdrecht, for classification.

The chances of finding heavy explosives were slim because the bombs had already been dropped. What did emerge were hundreds of well-preserved cartridges (intended for the six machine guns), compressed air bottles, parts of the cockpit and landing gear, engine parts, fragments of garments and shoes.

As for the victims, several remains were found, bone fragments, which are currently under DNA analysis. That this salvage took place is thanks to the National Aircraft Wreck Salvage Program established in 2019. It is estimated that 30 to 50 other manned aircraft wrecks lie in the soil in the Netherlands.

Vickers Wellington

The plane shot down was a twin-engine Vickers Wellington T2990 bomber. It could reach a top speed of 378 km/h, had a wingspan of 26 meters and was 20 meters long. The aircraft could carry 2,041 kg of bombs. The on-board artillery consisted of six water-cooled machine guns.

In the early years of the war, this Vickers Wellington was used purely as a night bomber. He was then used in combat against German submarines. Eventually, 11,000 of them were produced, in several variations.

Vilem Bufka

It is also known by whom Vilem Bufka and his crew were shot. It was Oberleutnant Egmont Prinz zur Lippe-Weissenfeld, a man who scored 45 air victories, but died in the harness on yet another mission in 1944, somewhere over Belgium.

He is buried in the German cemetery in Ysselsteyn, Netherlands. Salient detail: he visited Vilem Bufka at the hospital the day after the crash in 1941.