[richdlc]

Gilles - possibly KG100 Do217 - see pp. 179-180 of Roderich Cescotti 'Langstreckenflug' published 2012. Cescotti describes KG 100 operations against French resistance 'partisans' during June and July 1944 and relates an account of a Henschel HS 293 glide bomb sortie flown against Allied shipping off the Normandy coast.

"Invasion!"

" ...The fate met by Oblt. Heinrich Kirchhoff and his crew was particularly cruel. Returning from a combat sortie their Do 217 was hit by our own Luftwaffe anti-aircraft fire and they were forced to bail out over Marmande between Bordeaux and Toulouse, where they were taken captive by French resistance partisans and shot out of hand. By this stage the “French underground” were starting to represent a considerable danger for us. The quarters used by our various Staffeln, by the Geschwader and Gruppe Staffs were widely spread throughout Toulouse and the surrounding area, and the only means of staying in touch was by telephone network or vehicle. We soon had to forbid personnel from going out on their own as it had become too dangerous. Any activities in the city had to be carried in groups of men no smaller than three, each armed with his service pistol. With their liberation so close at hand all the pent-up hatred and sheer malice that the French felt towards us was now given expression....

On 19 June I received my first mission orders to bomb French resistance fighters - Bandbekämpfung – anti-partisan bombing. At 05:30 that morning we were airborne from Toulouse Francazal to fly a combined operation with Wehrmacht ground forces against a Maquis encampment located in the Pyrenees, dropping 500 kg bombs for no visible results. Less than one month later on 15 July at the request of our hard-pressed troops we bombed a village – dropping a ton of incendiaries on two barns and a farmstead, as well as pouring fire from our onboard armament into buildings. The targets were obliterated. This was what was meant by Terroristenbekämpfung – anti-terrorist operations. On our return I noted “ some shrapnel damage in the fuselage” which meant that we had come under fire – but what did this mean in reality. That both sides had sunk to a level of warfare that could do nothing but bring shame on those practising it. Time and again shot-down crews were being murdered in cold blood or simply disappearing never to be seen again. “Terror” on both sides escalated right up to the deployment on the German side of the radio-guided Hs 293 missile against ground targets..

I am unable to state exactly how many such operations were carried out by KG 100 as my duties were principally on the technical side. This meant that I was back in Germany for a few days during this period securing all that we needed for our aircraft. Nor was I in Toulouse on 20 July 1944 when news of the attempt on Hitler’s life came through – I was at the controls of the Geschwaderstab’s Ju 52 en route from Giebelstadt to Lüneburg..obviously we discussed Stauffenberg and his action in my immediate entourage and were agreed that this was a lost opportunity that should and could have been better exploited. It was not until after the war that we realised the fundamental weakness of Stauffenberg’s plan – that the prinicpal organiser of the plot was also its chief protagonist. No one believed in the much-heralded Endsieg or final victory – or at least no-one I knew...


source - Neil Page's Falke Eins blog