[Marcel Hogenhuis]

Hello John,

Many thanks for your prompt reaction! It's a bit late now for me to enter my archive dungeon, but I will check that diary again. I don't have any illusions that Highland has described times nor aircraft type: such details would have been stored in my day-to-day facts list related to Venlo airfield. The most specific detail he might have mentioned was 'fighters' and I am sure that this entry was written within the same notes about the airborne landings near Arnhem.

The absence of 'Venlo airfield' in any of your flight logs is in itself an answer too: at least it seems unlikely, that aircraft of JG 6 have been in Venlo. I do agree however that occasionally some individual fighters could have paid a quick visit for refueling. Circumstancial evidence suggests that airfield Venlo was given up on or soon after 17 September 1944: the first references of scaring off Dutch citizens from the former airfield in the Venlo police diaries are from the 20th September and later. The heavily bombed landing area was further obstructed against possible airborne landings since then.

Many thanks for pointing me in the direction of other possible units from which some aircraft might have landed in Venlo, too short to be noticed in detail. I will keep searching for details. The problem I discovered with eye-witnesses from that month: they seem to have forgotten most details because these events were minor when compared with the mass devastations by the bombing campaign against the Venlo bridges in October and November 1944... Shit happens!

Now Hauptmann Abel again: though I put his story on the frequently visited website from the Venlo archive, no reaction so far...

All the best, Marcel