Qualla: Steenbergen

Steenbergen: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Saberhaugen, CC BY-SA 4.0. An eyewitness on the ground at Steenbergen on the night of 19 September 1944 remembered the Mosquito circling, and then the engines spluttering, and then stopping. The aircraft came down in a field outside the town. The two men inside were RAF Wing Commander Guy Gibson, twenty-six years old and the most decorated bomber pilot in the service, and his navigator Squadron Leader Jim Warwick. They are buried in the Catholic cemetery in Steenbergen, side by side, with streets named for both of them and a propeller from the wrecked aircraft mounted in the city park. For decades the official story was that they had been shot down. The actual answer, now thought most likely, is that the Mosquito simply ran out of fuel.

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Image: Saberhaugen | CC BY-SA 4.0

Steenbergen: The City Rights of 1272

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Steenbergen, Public domain. Steenbergen is one of those Dutch towns that received city rights so early - 1272 - that the date itself does most of the historical work. The municipality sits in the agricultural northwest of North Brabant, halfway between Bergen op Zoom and Roosendaal, where the polder country...

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Image: Steenbergen | Public domain

Steenbergen: The Dam Busters

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Iusd, CC BY-SA 3.0. Guy Gibson became famous in May 1943 when he led 617 Squadron in the low-level moonlight raid on the Mohne, Eder, and Sorpe dams of the Ruhr valley - the operation officially called Chastise and immediately, indelibly, called the Dam Busters raid. He was twenty-four. He flew firs...

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Image: Iusd | CC BY-SA 3.0

Steenbergen: The Mosquito KB267

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Westbrabander, Public domain. What brought the de Havilland Mosquito XX serial KB267 down over Steenbergen has been argued about for eighty years. For a long time everyone assumed German anti-aircraft fire, because anti-aircraft fire was the most plausible explanation when a Pathfinder did not come home. When...

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Image: Westbrabander | Public domain

Steenbergen: Two Graves in a Catholic Cemetery

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Steenbergen, Public domain. Steenbergen treated Gibson and Warwick with the care that a small Dutch town with long memories gives to the men who fell on its soil. They were buried in the local Catholic cemetery - an unusual resting place for two Protestant Englishmen, but a deliberate gesture of respect by ...

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Image: Steenbergen | Public domain

Steenbergen: The Town That Outlasted the Story

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit onbekende graveur, Public domain. Steenbergen has produced its share of less catastrophic celebrities. Johan Arnold Bloys van Treslong was born here in 1757 - a Dutch naval officer who became one of the Patriot revolutionaries who tried to overthrow the stadtholder in the 1780s. Niel Steenbergen, the sculptor and...

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Image: onbekende graveur | Public domain