Embedded Files
French Bombshell
1/26/2014
the French Connection
I opened my (old fashioned) mail and find a letter from an historical society of Fressin, France inquiring about events that happened some 70 years ago. They had seen my Chapter 48-13 on Dad's bombing mission, googled my mailing address from the web and were requesting a picture of Dad and his certificate of bomb missions perhaps to include in an historical article. On Nov 18, 2013 the bomb squad had just arrived to disarm an American Bomb recently found just 200 meters from the end of the German occupied V1 buzz bomb launch ramp. This incident is just one of 2000 incidences the bomb squad has investigated during the year. Several Europeans are killed each year from left over bombs.
We began to exchanging information by emails. Her English is pretty good, but I have to use the Google Translator on all of the French documents. Bomb fuses were installed prior to a mission by the bomb ground crew. According to our WW2 bomb crew radioman, John Foster, there was cloud cover on 24 Jun 44 prohibiting target drop of the bombs. Dad as Flight Engineer had armed the bombs prior to the bomb run by setting off the nitric acid time delay fuze. This booby trapped them meaning they couldn't be disarmed in flight. They could blow up upon landing so they had to be dropped in the North Sea on the return to base in Halesworth, England. I would guess that was probably the case but with the fog of war, who knows exactly where and when the bomb in question came from. Dad had at least 2 other missions to the V1 sites in this Calais region.
Was able to download the 6 Jul 44 RCAHMS aerial photos of Fressin Woods (Bois de Fressin). The RAF Spitfires recon photos show the V1 ramp that I added into Google Earth. The US recon effort was mostly a collaboration with the Brits in Medmenham. Even with all the bomb craters around and dozens more bombing runs there was never a direct hit on this small target so the site always remained operational. The alignment indicates a direct path 120 miles to the center of London. The inertial guidance systems used in the V1 used gyroscopes but only to correct from the initial launch trajectory.
RAF photo interpreters used stereoscopes for 3D analysis of aerial photography, like used in my college course, and were instrumental in detecting the V1 launch sites for targeting.
This one ton warhead flying bomb was one of Hitler's secret weapons and had a devastatingly negative effect on the English morale. 9000 V1's were launched with a quarter getting through the defense systems. They killed around 6000 civilians in England. One interesting but effective technique was to have a Spitfire chase them down and do a wingtip to wingtip flip them off course.
Alexander Brown from Stuttgart, Germany has investigated these launch sites and included this map above showing the intense effort by the Nazis. You would think Hitler was rather determined. Robert Geoffrey Dancy (Very Slow loading large pdf file) lived in Kent along the path of some 4000 launched buzz bombs and recently published his account of the launch sites in France.
This second series Walter steel girder ramp on concrete blocks was constructed by a team of 40 soldiers and slaves in two weeks. They had arrived in Fressin in the Spring giving the Jacqueline Torchy (age 11) family 2 hours to clear out. First launch was on 12 Jun 44. The first V1's hit London 13 Jun 44. The doodlebugs were continuously fired by the Luftwaffe teams. When the bombing raids began the villagers had dug simple open trenches to take cover in. Later they took shelter in some larger caves nearby when bomb raids increasingly killed villagers. V1 buzz bombs were continuously launched, sometimes 4 per day until the Americans liberated the area on Sep 3, 1944. The krauts blew up many of the supply buildings during their retreat.
The photo above was taken after the village was liberated. It was snapped with a Kodak folding bellows camera salvaged from a discarded rucksack of a retreating German soldier. I'm sure the Glacons in the picture are related to the Historical Society president of the same name in this little village.
Ghisaine and Germaine Derain above are proud to have survived and pose on the launch ramp that points northwest to London.
Paul Schmidt was the earlier developer of the pulse jet technology in 1928 that Von Braun picked up on incorporating into the V1. Couldn't help wonder if that's why Great Grandpa Schmidt left Germany. Col Max Wachel headed this flying bomb operational program for the Luftwaffe. These are the precursors of the Tomahawk Cruise Missiles that the US developed after importing the German scientists at the end of the war. That uses the pulse jet or ram jet technology researched here in Malta by the German scientists.
Such a monumental Hitler effort but a more monumental US and Allied response.
extras
Bomb seems to be a 250 pounder GP 120 pounds high explosive TNT)
the American Bomb
US Manufactured Bombs information $20 off AN-M103 nose fuse
Hitlers Secret Weapons video
V Weapons Hunt book
Collection of V1 old photos and story.
La Voix du Nord en francais
Les Echos du Touquet en francais
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