Pilots go into hiding in It Heidenskip

On March 8, 1944, an American Liberator bomber was heavily damaged by German anti-aircraft fire on its way back from a raid on Berlin. . As a result, the aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing near Earnewâld.

This emergency landing did not run smoothly, as a result of which the second pilot was killed and the first pilot was seriously injured. Shortly after the emergency landing, the seriously injured pilot was taken to a German hospital. The other crew members were taken from a farm in Drachten by the resistance to various hiding places.

Eventually the crew members ended up in It Heidenskip at the farm of the Freerk de Jong family. Here the American pilots did work at the haymaking. Several residents had noticed that the hay wagons quickly came out empty again.

The pilots were housed around Christmas in 1944 at the farm of the Brandsma-Hylkema family on the Koaidyk, in order to prevent them from being discovered. During their stay, the pilots wrote a verse in the poetry album of their daughter Sjoerdje.The last hiding place was with the former director of the Leeuwarden Diaconessenhuis. 

On April 17, 1945, Canadian tanks entered It Heidenskip. There the pilots reported to the Canadians so that they could return home.

A birth announcement card from America was delivered to the Freerk de Jong family in the spring of 1947. It concerned the announcement of the birth of the daughter of their former hider Bill Mineer. As a thank you for the help during the war, Mineer had named his daughter after a daughter of De Jong, Maaike Louise Luiden.