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Re: 22 Aug 44 P-47 near Tours sur Marne (nr Athis)
Please excuse me for butting in here. I have full Allied intelligence data on all French airfields with current updates throughout the war. Among the 1,400+ listings of all airfields, landing grounds, field airstrips, dummy/decoy airfields, etc., there is no "Athis" or "Tours-sur-Marne" after summer 1940. According to this data, III./JG 53 was briefly at "Tours-sur-Marne" in mid-June 1940. Neither "Athis" or "Tours-sur-Marne" are ever mentioned again in the Luftwaffe documentation. After that date, only Épernay-Plivot is mentioned. That airfield lies less than 5 km west of the village of Athis. It was common for the Germans to call an airfield by one name while the Allies called in by another name, and that may be the case here.
Another possibility is that "Athis" is confused with Laon-Athies, which is 66 km northwest of Tours-sur-Marne.
I think this confusion needs to be sorted out before you can get an answer to your question.
BTW, I have the books on 8th AAF Fighter Command claims, both air and ground and the 9th AAF equivalent for fighter-bomber missions. Neither mentions an attack on airfields at Athis, Tours-sur-Marne, Laon-Athies or Épernay-Plivot during the second half of August 1944. That dosn't mean that one did not occur, but in an attack claiming the "extermination" of an entire Gruppe of fighters one might think it would be mentioned.
L.
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