Wekusta 51 at Vannes, 2-6 June 1944

[Roundway]

Thanks Ed,

Yes, the British had a break on 12 June 1940 when a Heinkel III of Wekusta 51 on a met sortie, was shot down off Margate by F/S Gellant (signature
on the combat report illegible). Two survivors were rescued by the Golden Spray, a fishing boat that witnessed the Heinkel crash. There was a third survivor, the meteorolgist Dr Hermann Freudenberg, but he drowned before he could be rescued. (From the Isle of Thanet Gazette, and a Margate historian who interviewed the captain of the Golden Spray in the 1990s).

Freudenberg's body was handed to the Royal Navy and that was the last heard of him, his body just disappeared and has no known grave. However, a decode of the met code was found in one of his pockets and that was used to break the Wekusta code. (From Wekusta by Kington and Selinger).

The Wekusta units used a variety of flight profiles, which I think are described in Wekusta although I don't have a personal copy.

The trans-Atlantic American met flights were flown by DC4s at about 10000 ft - I know the meteorologist (now 95) who made the first crossing, no sea-level observations were made, nor any ascents. The Americans did use UK-based B-17s to supplement the routine RAF met reconnaissance sorties; these made twice daily low-level (1500 ft asl) flights from Bovingdon to about 49N 22W, an ascent being made to 18000 ft at that point. (Even the birds were walking by Ratcliffe and Kington.

Brian