Steenbergen received city rights in 1272. Guy Gibson, Wing Commander and the first CO of the RAF's 617 Squadron which he led in the "Dam Busters" raid in 1943, crashed with his Mosquito aircraft in this municipality. Having returned to operational duties in 1944 after pestering Bomber Command, 26-year-old Gibson was killed along with his navigator, Sqn Ldr Jim Warwick, on a bombing raid on Rheydt (nowadays a borough of Mönchengladbach) operating as a Pathfinder Master Bomber based at RAF Coningsby, when his de Havilland Mosquito XX, KB267, crashed near Steenbergen on 19 September 1944. It was assumed for years that he had been shot down, but following the discovery of the wreckage it was found that a fault with the fuel tank selector possibly meant the aircraft simply ran out of fuel. An eye-witness account detailed how his aircraft circled Steenbergen and heard its engines 'splutter and stop'. In 2011 it was revealed the Mosquito may also have been shot down in a friendly fire incident. The graves are in the RC cemetery of Steenbergen. Streets have been named for both Gibson and Warwick, and one of the aircraft's propellers is located in the city park as a memorial. More information...
According to PR-model, gemeente-steenbergen.nl is ranked 441,620th in multilingual Wikipedia, in particular this website is ranked 16,567th in Dutch Wikipedia.
The website is placed before arkatechbeatz.com and after lgs.gov.gh in the BestRef global ranking of the most important sources of Wikipedia.
