Memorial at Bokel

Memorial at Bokel as an aviator memorial

The memorial near Bokel commemorates three soldiers who were killed in the crash of a Messerschmitt Me 110 during the Second World War . The memorial, established in 1997, is located near the village of Bokel , on Kreisstraße 45 in the Rendsburg-Eckernförde district in Schleswig-Holstein .

monument

Plaque at the memorial

Detail: propeller blades of the accident machine

The memorial was designed by the nearby sculptor Manfred Sihle-Wissel and consists of an approximately two and a half meter high concrete base on which the wing of a propeller of the Me 110 is located and on which a plaque with the following inscription is attached:

ON AUGUST 20, 1944,
THIS TIME THE AVIERS OF
A ME 110 DIED AS A VICTIM OF
THE OWN FLAK

HEINRICH LANGOHR
OTTO ASCHERMANN
EUGEN PETERS

A GRAVE THEY
WERE
ONLY FINDED IN THE WAR CEME OF HAMM SÜDERFRIEDHOF 1997

history

Just a few minutes after taking off from Schleswig-Jagel airfield on August 20, 1944 , the Messerschmitt Me 110 G-4 crashed on a training flight at 02:30 when its own Navy flak was mistakenly shot down in a field near Bokel . On impact, the machine bored about four to five meters deep into the boggy ground, and the rescue team found a propeller stuck 100 meters away in a meadow. The wreck and the dead were not rescued after the crash, but the site of the crash was filled with sand shortly after the accident. The police and the armed forces wanted to prevent unpleasant investigations into the cause of the accident. The empty coffins were filled with earth and mock burials with full military honors were carried out in the hometowns of the fallen. The relatives had previously been prevented from looking into the coffins.

In 1997, a farmer came across the remains of the machine while plowing. On February 8, 1997, the bones of the crew members were recovered from the salvage of the aircraft wreck. Research by the North German Broadcasting Corporation , the German Office in Berlin and the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge revealed that the Me 110 had undoubtedly been shot down by its own air defense on the night of August 20, 1944. On May 21, 1997, the remains of the three aviators were found in a shared grave at the Südfriedhof war cemetery in Hamm , Block 1, Row 2, Grave 128 (coordinates: 51 ° 40 ′ 12.8 ″ N , 7 ° 49 ′ 54.4 ″ O ), where as early as 1944 one of the dead was allegedly buried, whose relatives had unconsciously visited an empty tomb for over five decades. The memorial near Bokel was built in 1997. 51.670212 7.831777