Luftwaffe and Allied Air Forces Discussion Forum - Bombing of bridges over the Loire River

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Bombing of bridges over the Loire River - June 16, 1940

Hi,

I am looking for details about a bombing (around 2:30 pm) carried out onto Sancerre area (France) on June 16, 1940. Targets were bridges over the Loire at Sully, Pouilly and the canal at Saint-Satur (the village close to Sancerre). According to my preliminary research it seems that the involved unit was the K.G. 77 with a couple of Do17Z bombers. I seek the Staffel or Staffeln as well as details from the German side.

Best regards,
Frederic

Re: Bombing of bridges over the Loire River - June 16, 1940

Hello,

The English translation of the Heinrich Weiss manuscript does not provide a lot of detail about operations on the 16th of June by KG77, but it does suggest that the attacks to which you refer could have been by Do17Zs of that unit or Ju87Bs of StG2:

"On this day approximately half of Air Corps VIII`s units had a day of rest. The Corps HQ expected that the Western Campaign would soon be over and started to plan which units should be sent first to Germany for a rest. Therefore only some parts of KG77 and StG2 were engaged during the afternoon. They attacked the following targets: military columns, which were retreating towards the Loire River between Cosne and Bourges-La Charite, and communications routes at Bourges, Sancerre and Les Aix-d`Angillon.
"The dive-bombers carried out successful attacks on a railway junction located east of Bourges and destroyed many trains found along the Sancerre-Bourges railroad."

Not very detailed, but perhaps you can help fill in the details of the specific attacks, at what times, and with what results.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Larry Hickey
EoE Project Coordinator

Re: Bombing of bridges over the Loire River - June 16, 1940

Bonjour Larry,

If we trust the testimony I have, these bombers were from K.G. 77. Excerpts: “We had the opportunity to observe enemy planes; it was big twin-engines in gray/beige colors which were moving slowly. Planes came by several waves and thus successive dropping of bombs followed by gunfire.” On June 18, there was also a raid at La-Chapelle-d’Angillon (a village about 30km west of Sancerre) which caused several damages to the chateau and which killed many civilians. Even today, people there don't know why the village was attacked. Heinrich Weiss talks about that?

Thanks a lot for your assistance,
Frederic