Private detective in history                          På dansk                               Updated:  20 DEC 2011
Article by Jens Rebensdorff in the Berlingske Tidende on 22 November 2011 about HAL DT628, other things, and www.airmen.dk

Subtitle:    Pursuit in archives
Amateur historian solves mystery of the crew of a bomber that was shot down. That is his way of saying "thanks" for freedom. And he is part of a wave.

(See Photo from  Bispebjerg Cemetery)                 Private detective in history by Jens Rebensdorff

It is impossible to stop Anders Straarup. In the last 4 years he has put shootdowns and crashes of Allied planes in Denmark 1939 - 1945 on the map like
a dog on a trail of blood, and he juggles with number of planes, times for shootdowns, years, places and names of pilots, so that it is hard to follow him.

It is not easy to stop the retired schoolteacher, 67, from Randers even on the paths of Bispebjerg Cemetery. With his heavy bag filled with documentation the
amateur historian is walking several metres in front of us. We find the graves of a handful of Allied soldiers fallen on Danish ground during the Occupation.
"Known unto God" the inscription on 7 of the gravestones reads. Only God knew the identity of the English airmen, and a number of descendants were
had no information of their grandfathers' deaths in Denmark.

But then Anders Straarup appeared. With a German document from the archives of a late colleague, identification of old photos of landing wheels and engines
from a plane that was shot down, eye witness accounts and correspondance with experts in aviation he was able to document what till then had only been an
assumption. The 7 Englishmen had been the crew of the Halifax bomber DT628 which was shot down at 00.18 hours on 21 April 1943 at Revvej in Halskov.
The bomber was on its way down the Great Belt heading for Stettin in Poland to drop bombs on German positions. When the plane hit the ground it exploded
and was blown out of all recognition. Subsequent identification of the 7 crew members was impossible.

The Korsør Posten wrote about Anders Straarup's search for eye witnesses and he found people who could literally add flesh and blood to the cold historical facts.
On the website www.airmen.dk created by Anders Straarup to map allied air crashes, a witness who was 13 years old when the bomber hit the ground states that
he saw people shovelling charred parts of bodies into a horse-drawn carriage the day after the crash.

Digital archives make the interest boom
Anders Straarup is only one of a growing number of fiery souls who are using the Danish State Archives, the Danish National Archives, parish registers, census
papers, old police reports  - anything to research history. Since many archives have been made searchable on the internet the interest for digging in the past as
an amateur historian or a genealogist has risen strikingly according to the Danish National Archives. In 2009 www.arkivalieronline.dk had 484,325 visits. In 2010
there were 1,771,455 visits to the website. Chief of communication in the Danish National Archives Jeppe Bjørn relates that they have many like Anders Straarup
as visitors, but also people looking for things of general interest.

"Our online-service is an appetizer. When people find that it is easy and manageable to find data for research in genealogy and other areas, they want more,"
Jeppe Bjørn states.

The users of digital services all have different motives. In a rare interval in his account of his research Anders Straarup relates why he has dedicated himself to the
thorough research of Allies shot down over Denmark.
"It is my way of saying thanks to the airmen. Thanks because we are living in a free country. Like the woman who embroidered the names of 47 Allied airmen who perished near Horsens and the man who carved a long inscription and the names of the crew of a bomber that had crashed into a forest. I cannot embroider or carve
in stones, but I can make a website."

A treat for nerds
The apple of Anders Straarup's eye and his masterpiece as an amateur historian is his website www.airmen.dk. A paradise for people with the same interest in facts
and lists and links about everything that people with a passion for crashed aeroplanes can wish for: Photos of all gravestones of perished  Allied airmen in Denmark, photos and maps of crash sites, names, crew positions, rank and hometown of the airmen who died in their planes. Or just the documentation that it was a
liquid-cooled V-12 piston aero engine, "a Roll Royce Merlin engine" Anders Straarup states, which was in the Halifax when it tore the night with a bang in Halskov in
1943.

A treat for nerds and a feather in the cap for the man who hit the headlines of British newspapers because he solved a mystery. In the end of November he and some relatives of a crew member will attend the ceremony when the till then anonymous graves will be provided with headstones with names on.

Anders Straarup is aware that his work for 4 years and his work in the future to update www.airmen.dk may seem retrospective and nostalgic.

"Maybe. But fortunately we have a society with all kinds of people who are occupied with everything imagineable. And I'd like to address myself to this corner and
shed light on it and document it as well as I possibly can."

To the question if there is a mystery of an air crash that he needs to solve, Anders Straarup answers while he puts his documents into his bag and heads for Randers, "No, but there are many air crashes that I would like to know a little more about."

                                                                                               * * *
Comment from Anders Straarup:
Some day in 2012 new headstones will replace the old ones. When and how that will be marked has not in any way been decided yet. That was the plan.
Now everything has been cancelled! Not Halifax DT628 but Lancaster X crashed at Halskov.

A few relatives of one of the airmen visited Bispebjerg Cemetery in November 2011 and saw the old headstones.