{"id":9050,"date":"2017-03-08T11:38:47","date_gmt":"2017-03-08T11:38:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/danish-boy-finds-remains-of-german-messerschmitt-in-a-field\/"},"modified":"2017-03-08T11:38:47","modified_gmt":"2017-03-08T11:38:47","slug":"danish-boy-finds-remains-of-german-messerschmitt-in-a-field","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/danish-boy-finds-remains-of-german-messerschmitt-in-a-field\/","title":{"rendered":"Danish boy finds remains of German Messerschmitt in a field"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"DanielImage copyright Reuters
Image caption Daniel Kristensen with debris from the wreck of the World War Two aircraft <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When Klaus Kristiansen tried to bring his son's history homework to life, he probably wasn't expecting the boy to unearth a buried World War Two warplane.<\/p>\n

Or for excited TV crews, forensic police and explosives experts to descend on his family's farm in Birkelse, Denmark.<\/p>\n

But that's exactly what happened when 14-year-old Daniel Rom Kristiansen found the remains of a German Messerschmitt plane, and its pilot, in an unremarkable field.<\/p>\n

According to Mr Kristiansen, his grandfather once told him that a plane had crashed there in November 1944.<\/p>\n

He told Danish news station DR P4 Nordjylland: "When my son Daniel was recently given homework about World War Two, I jokingly told him to go out and find the plane that is supposed to have crashed out in the field."<\/p>\n

Father and son joined forces with a metal detector, but never expected to find anything.<\/p>\n

Mr Kristiansen, an agricultural worker, believed the wreckage had been removed years before.<\/p>\n

But then, a telltale beeping on a patch of boggy ground. <\/p>\n

The pair began digging, but realised they needed to go deeper.<\/p>\n

They borrowed an excavator from a neighbour, and around four to six metres down, the plane's carcass began to reveal itself.<\/p>\n

Image copyright Scanpix Denmark\/Henning Bagger via Reuters
Image caption The field where the wreckage came to light <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Their haul included an engine from the ME 109 Messerschmitt plane, Luftwaffe munitions, and the bones of a crew member who died in the crash.<\/p>\n

"In the first moment it was not a plane," Mr Kristiansen told the BBC. "It was maybe 2,000 - 5,000 pieces of a plane. And we found a motor... then suddenly we found parts of bones, and parts from [the pilot's] clothes.<\/p>\n

"And then we found some personal things - books, a wallet with money... Either it was a little Bible or it was Mein Kampf - a book in his pocket. We didn't touch it, we just put it in some bags. A museum is now taking care of it. I think there's a lot of information in those papers."<\/p>\n

Realising they had found something extraordinary, the farmer contacted World War Two historians and the Danish authorities.<\/p>\n

Mr Kristiansen said the field was being used "for grass, or cattle". <\/p>\n

His family has worked on the land where the plane was concealed for decades, oblivious to its secrets. He himself has lived there for 40 years.<\/p>\n

"We had never seen anything on the surface," he says simply. "Not a single bit of metal. <\/p>\n

"He was telling a lot of stories, my grandfather. Some of them were not true, and some of them were true - but this one was true. Maybe I should have listened to him a bit more when he was alive!"<\/p>\n