Before the 22-year-old New Zealand pilot William Gibbs Abbott (nickname Bill) is ordered to neutralize enemy transports in the Netherlands on September 9, 1944, he writes a letter to his father. “I want to help tidy things up,” he writes. In other words: “I want to make my contribution here, then I will come home.” But that does not happen. During his flight on September 9, 1944 above Zutphen, Abbott’s plane is shot at by the Germans. His P51 Mustang III catches fire almost immediately and crashes in the floodplains on the side of the Hoven and Bill dies immediately.
On Monday, September 9, three planes, so-called Thunder Yaks, flew over the IJssel twice. And over the monument of Bill Abbott, the New Zealand pilot, affiliated with the British Royal Air Force, whose plane was shot down by the enemy nearby on September 9, 1944. Exactly eighty years later, there will be a commemoration meeting.