Father, son unearth truth about Nazi plane crash on family farm

Around Christmastime 1944, a German fighter plane crashed on the Kristiansen family farm in Denmark.

That was one of the tales told by Daniel Kristiansen’s great-grandfather. His children and grandchildren who heard the story wondered whether it was true.

Grandpa, after all, was known to enjoy a good yarn.

Daniel, 14, and his father, Klaus Kristiansen, decided there was no harm in searching for the plane. A teacher had assigned Daniel a project involving World War II. Why not include a bit of family history?

Equipped with a metal detector, the pair recently scoured their farmland in Birkelse, Denmark.

To their surprise, the detector beeped. They began to dig with hand-held spades, but turned up little. Undeterred, they acquired a backhoe. Some four yards down, they hit metal. And then human remains.

“It was like opening a book from yesterday,” Klaus Kristiansen told CNN

What the father and son discovered was a Luftwaffe Messerschmitt Bf 109, broken into, by Kristiansen’s estimate, 2,000 to 5,000 pieces. A few bits of debris, like the aircraft engine, remained in large sections.

The father and son found a few objects on the pilot’s remains: a pair of old coins, three wrapped condoms, his wallet and ration stamps good for the canteen at the nearby Aalborg air base, which the Germans had captured in 1940.

Included among the pilot’s personal effects was a book. “Either it was a little Bible or it was

Kristiansen told the BBC.

The Historical Museum of Northern Jutland took charge of the remains. The museum’s curator said the pilot’s papers remained intact, so it may be possible to determine his name.

Kristiansen said he hoped the pilot could receive a proper burial in Germany.