He111 crew murdered on the 11th of may 1940.

[Brian Bines]

Details of the incident appear in both the 1941 and 1955 edition of the book ' Fighter Pilot '. I thought that S/L Halahan returned to No 1 Sqd. on May 13th and he witnessed the incident on his travels back to his unit, so is the date of May 11th. definite for the crash of the Heinkel.

[Bernard]

Good evening,

I am awfully sorry, I just checked AIR27/1. S/Ldr Halahan was shot down on the 12th of may during a cover patrol over Maastricht. He returned to Berry au Bac on the 13th.
So this Heinkel must have been shot down on the 12th.

Thanks for your attention.

Bernard.

[Laurent Rizzotti]

If he came back from Maastricht to Berry-au-Bac, the area in which he drove (mostly Belgium) had few black French troops. Most of the troops engaged here were metropolitan or North African troops.

Two Machine Gunners half-brigades of Madagascar were engaged in Monthermé area, along the Meuse River.

But this story is closer than German propaganda than I would have believe. AFAIK roughly a dozen German airmen were executed by French troops or armed civilians during the 1940 campain, but I have not heard of such a case. In fact all the cases I know happened later, once the Luftwaffe had started to bombard more French roads and cities. In the first days of the campain, the main targets in France were the airfields. In 10-12 May, on the other hand, several Belgian cities were hard hit, so another possibility would be that the killing was done by Belgians.

All cases of "beheading by black troops" that I have seen studied in details were in fact bodies mutilated (usually not beheaded) by "usual war damage" (shrapnel and so on) and were sometimes justifications to shoot black POWs (Germans shot down between 1000 and 2000 POWs during the campain, more than hald of them being Black and North African troops).

Where did Halahan force-land, if it is known ? That will help to reduce the search area...

[Bernard]

Good morning Laurent,

Thanks for your reply.

The best I know about Halahan' s landing location is west of Maastricht in
Belgian territory.

Another version of this incident refers to Morocon troops.

Best regards.

Bernard.