The Eagles Over Europe Project

[jvmasset]

There where two distinctly separate airfields in Villacoublay: "Villacoublay" south of the N12 road (also known as Villacoublay Süd by the Germans); this is the one where the original photo was taken.
The second airfield was situated on the North of the road and was known as the Villacoublay-Morane airfield. It was initially a privately owned airfield, and the location of the Morane Saulnier flying school.
Villacoublay-Morane (known as Villacoublay Nord) was used by the Germans especially in 1943 (JG105) and 1944 (JG26); for the very keen eye some of the dispersal taxways can still be guessed near the urbanization to the north of the field in the woods.
Look at the 1949 photos in Geoportail (those of Villacoublay Sud are no longer accessible due to military base status...yes, even in 1949!)

JVM

[RT]

"Vélizy-Villacoublay Airfield, France," or "Vélizy Airfield, Villacoublay, France?"


City is Vélizy name of airfield Villacoublay, like Chicago-O'Hare , Braunschweig-Waggum, Oslo-Fprnebu ... Boulder-Municipal airport

Rémi

[Larry Hickey]

Hello,

Thanx to all who have helped sort this all out. Your efforts are appreciated.

Remi,

You got to the heart of my problem, and I'll refer to this AF from now on as Villacoublay Airfield, Vélizy, France, which is the system that I use on my profiles and photo captions.

You earlier asked about the W.Nr. on this a/c. We've enlarged the W.Nr. and one of our key German experts (Merlin on this board) thinks that it is 1349, "which would indicate a Bf 110C-1 from the second Augsburg batch, manufactured during June 1939." However, this is very hard to read, and some think that this is a C-2, rather than a C-1. So there is still room for discussion here.

This is not the a/c in which Hptm Horst Liensberger, the Gr Kdr, was shot down on 27 Sept 1940, which was W.Nr.3560. We're trying to do profiles of both a/c. The problem with doing the latter is that we have only the intact tail to work from, with four cocardes, and the rest is wreckage. We have to reconstruct the rest from the known camouflage patterns used on a/c in that serial number batch, and the white nose carried by unit aircraft during Sept., 1940. If, by chance, anyone has a photo of W.Nr. 3560 before it crashed, this would be a big help to us.

[Larry Hickey]

Hello,

For profile purposes I need the first name of Uffz Schulte, the BF on crew of 2./ZG76 Bf110 pilot Ofw Leo Schuhmacher circa mid-August, 1940. Does anyone have this?

[Larry Hickey]

Hello,

In our efforts to acquire photos to document every German and Allied a/c shot down during the Phoney War/Sitzkrieg/drole de guerre, our EoE team recently acquired these scans from items offered on a French auction site. This series, showing burning wreckage, is captioned as a German plane crashed in the Ardennes on April 30, 1940 This would be a Phoney War crash, but it just doesn't seem to match any German loss on April 30th or near that time. I'm not even sure that it matches the description of the Bloch 174 from the FAF that crashed that day. Since the wreckage is still smoking you would think that the date would be reliable, and not something that happened previously. I note, however, that one of the photo backs may have 20-4-40 written on the back, with a possible location. Could we be interpreting the handwriting incorrectly and looking on the wrong day? There were Luftwaffe a/c shot down on the 20th that could be our crash. Is anyone familiar with this crash site and incident, perhaps from other photos that exist from it?

http://ihra.smugmug.com/photos/i-Cwn...-CwnS5j5-L.jpg

http://ihra.smugmug.com/photos/i-PKK...-PKKppPM-L.jpg

http://ihra.smugmug.com/photos/i-ppj...-ppjDgXg-L.jpg

http://ihra.smugmug.com/photos/i-W5j...-W5jJZqD-L.jpg

http://ihra.smugmug.com/photos/i-jx4...-jx4hdss-L.jpg

At about the same time we acquired this photo, which may not be related to the photos above, but could be. Is this crash familiar to anyone? It is probably also a Phoney War crash in France.

http://ihra.smugmug.com/photos/i-5nP...-5nPnNWG-L.jpg

I know that these "smoking wreckage" photos are very difficult to ID precisely, but I'm hoping that other photos exist with accurate captions, or someone has found French unit records that ID this incident.

Once again, I'd like to appeal to anyone who has photos of Allied or German crashes lost during the Phoney War to make me aware of them. We have all the most well known aircraft photos, but there are bound to be others that are from personal, local or regional sources that we don't have or know about.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Frans A]

Larry,
I have 2 crashes on 40-04-20
Lt. Helmut Hoch KIA 2./JG 54 Crashed at Belfort, buried in Andilly
Lt. Fritz Sievers KIA 7./JG 53 Crashed at Thionville, buried in Niederbronn-les-Bains
Frans A

[Larry Hickey]

Franz,

I have those same two Bf109 losses on 20.04.40. However, I don't know if these crash locations are in the Ardennes, or if the handwriting really says 20 or 30 April.

Can anyone help clarify this?

[Nordpol54]

@ Larry,

for my eyes it reads as 30.

Best Regards
Norbert

[Larry Hickey]

Hello,

Including direct emails I agree that this reads 30 April 1940. But if this is the case, how do we explain the lack of available candidates for German losses on that date? Could this be the Bloch 174 that crashed on that 30.04.40? Nothing else fits.

[Larry Hickey]

Hello,

I'm trying to determine when Ofw Leo Schuhmacher first joined 2./ZG76. I know that he was the senior non-com pilot in the unit by the Norwegian Campaign (4/40), but did his service with the unit extend back to 09/39 and the beginning of the war ? When did he first join the unit?

Thanx,