22 Aug 44 P-47 near Tours sur Marne (nr Athis)

[hautemarnechris]

Hello Rob and Larry

just had some news from the folks at the Vraux airfield museum.

They say there was an airfield equi-distant from Tours-sur-Marne, Plivot and Athis. It was built by the Germans as a satellite of Plivot and enabled them to conceal aircraft in the woods to the South of Bisseuil - something they couldn't do at Plivot which is/was located in open farmland.

Attached (I hope) is a US report on the airfield after it was servicable.

Attachment 7886

The coordinates were 49deg 01 58N, 4deg 05 48E. I think you can make out the line of the runway on Google Earth.

It fits most of the information I have - (1) the Ultra decrypts refer to it as either "Athis" or "Athis Plivot" (2) An Ultra decrypt says it was located between the river Marne and the railway (3) The pilot in Rob's combat describes it as "Tours-sur-Marne" (4) My agent's report describes it as "Tours" by which he almost certainly meant Tours-sur-Marne.

The Wikapedia entry for Athis is I think incorrect or perhaps describes an additional airfield closer to Athis. The entry describes the airfield as located to the Southeast of Athis - the airfield the Vraux museum folk told me about was located to the northeast of Athis. Also the concrete runway it mentions seems to be incorrect as are the co-ordinates given in the entry and also the date on which it became operational again. I suspect they found a section of concrete, assumed it was a fragment of the old airfield and used its lat/longs for the location of Athis airfield. I suppose it's just possible that the entry is referring to the original Plivot airfield which, according to Wikapedia, was rebuilt closer to Plivot after the war. But that doesn't fit with Larry's airfield intelligence summary.

Larry's allied airfield intelligence info look as though the airfield might not have been known (although I think that's unlikely).

But the new information does look promising. II./Jg 3 seem to have left Athis/Plivot /Tours-sur-Marne on the 21st August but two pilots were reported in Ultra as "detached" - perhaps one of them was Obergefreiter Dorn who made the combat report on the 22nd August. Alternatively, II./Jg 3 actually left on the afternoon of the 22nd.

I seem to recall an Ultra message which says that II./Jg 3 left their aircraft behind for the use of III./Jg 76 (I may be confused on this point - will have to go back through my records to check). That might explain Rob's point about the groundcrew staying on at Athis/Plivot/Tours-sur-Marne.

The folk at Vraux have wartime photographs of the airfield. I shall meet them next week and see what they have. Also, I will visit the alleged site of Athis/Plivot/Tours-sur-Marne and, I hope, bore you with my holiday photos.

Chris

[Nick Beale]

Just to complicate life, there's an Epernay-Plivot that's still an active airfield.

Also this list of aerodromes in the Marne Département might be of help.

[hautemarnechris]

Hello Nick

Thanks for that.

Yes, I was aware of "Epernay-Plivot". The lat/longs Larry has for wartime Plivot give a point dead-smack at the intersection of the runways at the modern Epernay-Plivot. In 1944 Athis-Plivot/Tours-sur-Marne seems to have been a satellite landing ground for Plivot where aircraft could be concealed.

None of the other fields in the list you gave fit with the information I have from Ultra, Luftwaffe reports and other sources.

The only "fly-in-the-ointment" is the Wikapedia entry. It is I think, like so much in Wikapedia, unreliable. But I'll check it out next week when I shall be in the area.

Chris

[Larry deZeng]

Bravo, Chris! Thanks for sticking with this conundrum and burr under the saddle that is a real challenge to resolve. Your new information is a giant step forward and I hope your forthcoming trip to the area will finally let us put this puzzle to bed. There is a definitive number of airfields and satellites in the area under examination that are known by a mish-mash of different names depending on the source: Allied, German, French and Wiki. It's a matter of pinning the right tail on the right donkey. I am going to refrain from trying to analyze it until the results from your trip are in and we have all the available data in front of us, even though it is tempting to try and do so now!

Good job!

Larry

[hautemarnechris]

Re the aircraft left behind at Athis. I've gone back through my notes - when Jg 27 departed from Athis on 10/11th August they left their aircraft for II./Jg 3 (according to Ultra).

Chris

[Nick Beale]

ULTRA CX/MSS/R282(C), para. 17 speaks of an Unteroffizier being subordinated to III./JG 3 at "Pocancy near Chalons" on 19 August 1944.

Going by Google Eerath, Pocancy is 7.8 km. SSE of Epernay-Plivot aerodrome. It may have been the location of the Gruppe's HQ or billets rather than another aerodrome, of course.

[Larry deZeng]

Some 20 or so years ago, I remember seeing a list authored by Luftflotte 3 or by Feldluftgaukdo. Westfrankreich that identified all of the airfields, landing grounds, field airstrips, alternate landing grounds, satellites and dispersal fields in France on or about 1 July 1944. I knew it could only be in the microfilmed Luftwaffe documents from NARA T-321, T-405 or T-971, so I spent all of today checking the 25 or so rolls that I have but without any luck. I have to assume that it's in one of the other 382 rolls from these series that I borrowed from interlibrary loan rather than purchase. I was hoping this list might clear up the puzzle surrounding these 4 or 5 airfields regarding their locations and proper names. Two of these "airfields" are, I suspect, one of the following:

Aussenliegeplatz: remote dispersal or outlying parking area.
Ausweichflugplatz: alternative airfield, satellite airfield or dispersal airfield (minor – usually no services).
Behelfsflugplatz: auxiliary airfield.

The list I was looking for would have answered this question.

L.

[Nick Beale]

Another reference to Plivot:

[hautemarnechris]

Hello everybody

Pity about the missing microfilm which Larry mentions - that would probably settle the matter.

just back from France where I took the opportunity to visit the impressive Vraux avaiation museum and speak to the curator. I also visted Plivot and stooged around in the fields near Athis looking for signs of the airfield mentioned in Wikapedia. I can really recommend a visit to the Vraux museum. It's run by extremely helpful and knowledgeable aviation enthusiasts and has numerous interesting exhibits including one dedicated to Tours-sur-Marne airfield.

The exhibit dedicated to Tours-sur-Marne airfield has amongst other things a wartime arial photograph of the airfield obtained from Keele, a German combat report from an officer of Jg 3 in which he describes shooting down a US aircraft on the 22nd August shortly after taking off from Tours-sur-Marne, a plan of the airfield, and several photographs taken shortly after it was captured with several damaged Bf109s, etc. The curator told me it wasn't bombed by the allies but it was subjected to some strafing attacks.

I've taken photographs of the exhibit but unfortunately my pesky wife has taken the camera today. I shall post them here tomorrow.

Nobody I spoke to in the area knows anything about Athis airfield as described in the Wikapedia entry. The Wikapedia entry says there were two German-built 1700 metre concrete runways at Athis whereas, according to at least two sources, the Tours-sur-Marne airfield had a single sod & SMT 5000 x120 foot runway at an azimuth of 101deg. That's consistent with the plans exhibited at Vraux. It's possible that the Wikapedia entry is confusing Athis with Plivot. It says that Plivot was rebuilt in its current location (west of Athis village) after the war. However, the people I spoke to believe that current Plivot was built in the 1930s and was used by the allies in 1940 but it was not used by the Luftwaffe which instead built the Tours-sur-Marne airfield because it gave better concealment to its aircraft.

When US forces captured Tours-sur-Marne airfield they called it Athis (ref A-76). That fits with both the US document I posted earlier, the entry in http://www.ixengineercommand.com/airfields/physical.php, the various items exhibited at Vraux aviation museum and other sources.

So I think the remaining puzzle centres on whether Plivot was originally sited closer to Athis village but was rebuilt in its current location after the war. If that is the case then the Wikapedia entry is confusing Plivot with Athis. If Plivot was not rebuilt then the Wikapedia entry is almost certainly wrong. Perhaps it's significant that there's no evidence that Plivot was used by the allies after August 1944. Instead the allies used nearby Tours-sur-Marne/Athis. That suggests that Plivot was too badly damaged to be used - thus supporting the hypothesis that Plivot was rebuilt in its current location after the war. The evidence against that hypothesis is Larry's source (see his earlier entry) which gives co-ordinates placing wartime Plivot in its current location.

There are also some issues around the names used in the Ultra decrypts - variously 'Plivot', 'Athis-Plivot' and 'Athis'. 'Tours-sur-Marne' is not used but 'Athis' is described in an Ultra decrypt as being east of Epernay between the river Marne and the railway line which fits Tours-sur-Marne airfield. I'm not qualified to say whether those are decrypts of names given in clear in the original Luftwaffe signal or an interpretation by the code-breakers of Luftwaffe airfield codes used in the original signals. Perhaps Nick can help with this? Re Nick's info about Pocancy: according to Ultra and other sources III./Jg 3 was operating from Chalons airfield which was some way fom Pocancy.

Chris

[Larry deZeng]

Chris -

Great trip report! It is going to take a day or two to digest it all, but for right now I would just like to add the following:



With the exception of Vertus, these were among the several hundred dispersal fields set up by the Luftwaffe in France between approximately February and August 1944, and are the only ones listed for the finite area under discussion, i.e. Epernay east through Tours-sur-Marne to highway A26, south to Saint-Gibrien, southwest to Vertus and then north to Epernay. None of these existed for some time as active/operational fields prior to that date. Most of these were just reasonably level fields of a prescribed dimension and had little or no preparation work done on them. Others may have existed during the 1940 campaign in the West, but were then shut down or inactivated until they were reopened in 1944. This information comes from BA-MA Freiburg Signatur RL Kart 40/7, 8, 53, 225; Kart 42/12, 13; Kart 43/1, 2. These are detailed Luftwaffe maps of the Bodenorganisation, including a map or list of all airfields of whatever sort in France as of June 1944.

Listed:
Plivot: listed as operational June 1944 – August 1944.
Pocancy: listed as operational June 1944 – August 1944.
Vertus: listed as operational October 1943 – August 1944.
Vraux: listed as operational June 1944 – August 1944.

Not Listed:
Athis
Épernay
Épernay-Plivot
Tours-sur-Marne

The above may help toward arriving at a conclusion regarding these airfields.

Larry