VISITORS to an Anglesey country park can now use their mobile phones to discover the story behind a memorial to American airmen who died nearby on December 22, 1944.

All ten crew members of the US Air Force Liberator bomber, nicknamed The Jigs Up, jumped out with parachutes ready after two of the engines stopped while the plane waited to land at RAF Valley. Eight were never seen again.

They were far from their English air base and, in the darkness, may not have realised they were about to descend into the sea. They did not attach the flotation equipment which may have saved their lives.

The memorial at Breakwater Country Park lists their names and is topped with one of the plane’s propeller blades, recovered from the seabed in 1992.

Now the information project HistoryPoints, in conjunction with Breakwater Country Park, has placed a small QR-code plaque near the memorial.

Anyone with a smartphone can scan the codes to read about the events that night and see a photo of the plane courtesy of Stephen Hutton, whose father was the plane’s usual rear gunner.

The information is free to download (other than any data charges in the user’s mobile contract) and is also available online at the HistoryPoints.org website.

Historian Adrian Hughes, who helped to produce the web page about the accident, said: “There is only so much information that can be displayed on a memorial like this, so we are pleased to have the opportunity to tell the story of these airmen.

"We hope that the QR codes will further raise awareness of the sacrifice the men made while contributing to the Allied war effort.”

This is one of several sites around Wales where HistoryPoints QR codes allow the public to read about military air crashes, including in Ceredigion, Caerphilly and Wrexham.

The loss of five airmen from another US Air Force Liberator, in January 1944, is marked with a QR-code plaque beside the Wales Coast Path above Penmaenmawr, Conwy.

HistoryPoints QR codes can be found at almost 100 locations on Anglesey. It started in Conwy in January 2012 as an experiment allowing residents and visitors to read the history of local places on smartphones or tablets.

Since then it has created web pages and corresponding QR codes for more than 1,300 locations around Wales including buildings, bridges, memorials and sites connected with interesting people or events.

Visit: http://historypoints.org/index.php?page=american-aircrew-memorial-holyhead