Lancaster Bomber 514 Squadron

let's see what we can do jaspar. Heinz shot down 2 Lancs and 2 Hali's on the March date

 

Hello Jaspar, welcome to this thread and to this forum. If you wish you may go into the new recruit section and introduce yourself there. You may also open a special thread for the March 15th date. Heinz shot down three aircrafts and two were in Alsace, so the Stuttgart figure seems to be correct, unless LL693 was shot by another nightfighter. BTW Is R. Favager still alive?

 

Hi All,

An update from Dad. He continues to build and fly model aircraft. He recently converted a 1930's vintage free-flight model aircraft to radio control. The aircraft is named "The Flying Quaker". I remember this aircraft flying free-flight in the 1950's
In this recent image he is testing engine performance in the back yard. (Thumbnail at the bottom)

Wayne

(This is a YouTube video of a Flying Quaker: YouTube - Gaiant Quaker #3 )

 

Still flying after all those years! This is a great picture. I will watch the giant Quaker video . Thank you for the update. Once an airman, always an airman!

 

Hello All,

This afternoon I had a conversation with Dad about D-Day and the two Ops he took part on June 6, 1944. We used the Internet with Google Talk and some recording software to record our discussion.
The audio file of that conversation is here: D-Day E.A. Campbell along with an image of his log book entries. He mentions that both these raids took place in daylight, but the convention of a red log entry for night and green for day suggests they were both night raids, Dad isn't sure why they were entered as night raids.
The audio is about 12 minutes in duration.

Regards, Wayne Campbell

 

Another great addition to this fine thread. Remember it was Daylight around 4 or 5 pm in June, so this might be the answer to that question.

Something else. I have read the testimony of a fighter pilot in a book from Chuinard. This flyer called Dwight Alverson who was shot down at vendôme , right next to Freteval after a Dogfight on August 8th 1944, so Alex might have heard , or maybe even seen this plane in combat. The greatest part of this story follows: the man was found twice by the Germans, the first time by a German Shephard, but the Germans, including the dog, pretended they did not find him. One even walked towards him to let him know he perfectly knew his hiding place and who he was, but left him unharmed in the bush. Then he hid in a garden only to be discovered a second time by a German trooper. The men stared at each other, then the German lid a cigarette and walked away and never told his superiors. The American was then helped by Resistance fighters who took him to the American lines near Le Mans.
This drives me to a puzzling question. Do you think more Germans in the Vendôme area pretended not to know were hidden airmen were? I know several airmen wondered why they were never discovered. Could it be possibly that some Germans knew and did not want to bother , knowing the Americans were close and that attacking the camp would not have changed the course of the war? The testimony is beyond any doubt and and among the Resistants who helped this man were the mayor and the local doctor. Besides why would a soldier lie about something like that? So at least one part of the German Vendôme garrisson had decided to leave allied airmen alone before the actual arrival of Patton's Army. Makes you think...

 

Skipper I just had a short chat with dad, he mentioned that the Freteval evaders were suspicious that some of the German troops in the area were aware of the camp but took no action against it.
Dad also mentioned that as they returned to base after the first DDay raid, allied naval ships started shooting at them keeping up a barrage of fire even after Very flares, identifying the aircraft as "friendly", were fired from the Lanc.

 

JW,

I have some conversations with my dad posted here:
Conversations with F

These conversations follow the story of this thread.

Regards, Wayne Campbell

 

It is not the first time that I hear (from both sides) that there were some suspicions about people knowing were the hiding place was and pretending not to know. But it's the first time I actually have a testimony with names and place to confirm this. This is the Vendome Garisson, not the Chateaudun one which was vey active looking for evaders. Another example: Why would the Germans at Moisy have arrested the driver (Virginia) and not even search her truck in which airmen were hidding, leaving it unguarded so that they could escape and returned to Freteval. Then how could they have not have spotted these men (who were lost and panicked in the middle of a Luftwaffe camp? ). How come one of the freteval Resistants found them and get them back safely? This is just a theory , but what if they had arrested Virginia because they had no choice (presence of a Nazi officer for instance?) of course once those arrested were handed over to the Gestapo, things were radically different. So many new questions. ..

I'm not surprised either about the fact that Lancaster were shot at by "friendly fire". There must have been alot of confusion and rookie soldiers did not know how to recognize a Lanc which usually did not fly during daylight.

 

This is fantastic! Thanks so much for all the great reading here guys!!

 

Thanks 'bigfun' for the great photo of the cemetery in Holland recognizing the brave men and women amongst those to whom I am personally grateful. And "Good Ol' Boy" I'm glad you are interested in these episodes.
Skipper I think your reasoning is bang on regarding the subject of our staying undiscovered for so long. I'll quickly review some of my own observations. Early in our trek from the Arthur's "safe house" to Freteval Jonesy and I spotted a plume of dust in the distance. We soon realized it was rapidly coming in our direction. Hastening our steps we reached a shallow culvert under the roadway into which we scrambled. It was a large black car with several uniformed occupants. It sped overhead and continued without slowing down. There is little doubt that we had been seen and we warily continued on our way.
Nearing the end of our trudge we were surprised to see, up ahead, an American GI in fatigue dress casually waiting at a minor crossroad. We soon realised this was a German soldier standing there. We hastily decided to just nod and say nothing. Fortunately this is what did happen and on we went.
Hope to have a bit about a French pilot, Jean Calmel DFC who began flying "Leo 45s". This was in Africa Erich. Enough for tonight.
Cheers All EAC

 

This is fascinating. The more I read about it, the more I think there were really some Germans who knew.
Something else. I hope to ge tthe following item within a week: . It's an authentic document that was signed in the 70s by many of the surviving Comete Resiststants, including Blomaert himself! You certainly know he was directly responsible for creating the Freteval hiding place. The enveloppe travelled via the Comete escape line until the Pyrennées. This is the route you would have taken if Freteval had not been established.

 

Well look what I got in the mail today!

This 1972 document is signed by the Comete line members including Baron Blommaert himself. It is clearly mentionned that he organized the escape of airmen Freteval.

It is also signed by three other famous members including W J BRAZILL DFM .

Just look at their curiculum and note the medals from various countries.

The letter also shows a map that goes from Belgium to Spain via the Loire valley , Freteval is south of Orleans. The cover flew from Belgium (Waterloo =RAFES HQ) to France (Bayonne) , then to England until the RAF post room at Ruislip, Middlesex. It took 24 days to get there.

 

I Just opened a new Kieffer threat in order not to highjack this one. However I am still fumbling and the latest posts I wanted to tow to to this place did not appear in the process. If I can't find them back could you post the Kieffer link again please? Sorry about that.

 

This story continues to evolve. Incredibly we now have images from Johannes Strassner's log book (Flugbuch).

Melvin, a contributor to this website:, Home Page, spoke with Strassner in the 1990's and aquired images of his log book.
He has generously shared those with us, a total of 19 images. This contribution fills in more of the details. Skipper, is in the process of translating these documents.

This is Strassner's entry in his Flugbuch from the attack of July 28/29, 1944
(I had to split the entry in two to fit on the page)



This is the more detailed combat report:



This is Skipper's translation of the report:




Once again a big thanks to the many people who have contributed to the development of this story.

Wayne

 

Melvin also shared this image of Leutnant Johannes Strassner

 

Wonderful isn't it? It perfectly confirmed everything we discussed earlier. The picture is an excellent addition I'm so glad Staffelied shared these documents with us.

 

While killing a bit of time at work I have caught up on the thread. So many fascinating contributions continue to be made: those of 514 Squad. and Fretval forest especially. As a refresher I am EAC's grandson, living in Toronto. I made the promise that I was going to make a visit to the Toronto archives to attempt some research on Bob Giffin or his family. Sorry for keeping anyone's hopes up but I have not done so yet. My job has been dominating my time the last few months and I have had little of it to myself. Its looking like the summer will allow me a little time off to pursue such things thankfully. The archives visit is still planned.

 

This is superb news indeed. Am pleased to see my narrative of the incident corroborated in general and most cases in detail.

For example: Opening fire at 50 metres from behind and below. This coincides with Ben's warning of being joined by "more company". It also accounts for the shape and positioning of the long slashes appearing throughout the top of the port wing as they appeared to have been fired forward and upward through the fuel tanks.

2200m altitude - I've said our height was about 7000 feet. It's my feeling that the first attack set the port engines on fire. I activated the Gravinor fire extinguishers and the flames subsided. After the second attack the flames resumed worse than before and the starboard engine quit. Then the starboard outer reved up and out of control. And the spiraling began . . . and continued until impact. EAC