Bombing Raid 8 March 1943

[keith A]

The 8th Air Force chronology states "(Eighth Air Force) VIII Bomber Command Mission No. 41: 67 B-17's of the 1st Bombardment Wing and 16 B-24's of the 2d Bombardment Wing are dispatched against the marshalling yard at Rouen, France. Thirteen B-24's drop 39 tons of bombs on the target at 1402-1403 hours local; we claim 14 aircraft destroyed, 3 probably destroyed and 3 damaged; we lose 2 B-24's, 1 is damaged beyond repair and 3 others are damaged; casualties are 5 KIA, 3 WIA and 17 MIA. 54 B-17's hit the target at 1430 hours dropping 134.75 tons of bombs; they claim 14 enemy aircraft destroyed, 1 probably destroyed and 5 damaged; we lose 2 B-17's, 1 is damaged beyond repair and 9 others are damaged; casualties are 8 WIA and 20 MIA. The bomb run over Rouen is considerably disrupted by the well-executed attack of fighters which down 2 bombers including the lead aircraft. This action is preceded by an earlier wave of German fighters which occupy the fighter escort while the second wave attacks the bombers".

I had thought these raids were on two separate targets but the Chronology indicates it was two waves hitting the same target.

Combats & Casualties; RAF & US Fighter Commands 1943 with Annotated Text ISSUE I .indicates the B-17s hit Rennes several hundred kilometres away. Can anyone tell me if this is a discrepancy, typo etc.?

regards

Keith

[RSwank]

There are a couple of MACRs that might help (or maybe confuse the situation more).

B-24 41-23988, 44th BG, MACR 15333, was shot down 9 miles N of Rouen at 14:05 on that date. Target is listed in the MACR as Rouen.

B-17 41-24588, 305th BG is listed with a target of Rouen went down in the channel 10 miles of Selsey Bill on the return flight, MACR 15718.

(Based on the high MACR numbers, these both appear to be after-the-fact MACRs as listed on fold3, done months or even years or so after the crashes. These types of MACRs were often done to answer questions raised by families of the missing men.)

[Laurent Rizzotti]

According to a RAF chronology compiled by Tony Wood years ago, on this day the 11 Group Ramrod 39 was flown in two parts:
11 Group Ramrod 39/I saw Spitfires escort 16 B-24s to bomb Rouen-Soteville railyards (13 bombed at 1402 hrs). They claimed 3 Fw 190 (2 by 64 Sqn, 1 by 122 Sqn) for one loss (340 Sqn)
11 Group Ramrod 39/II saw Spitfires escort 67 B-17s to bomb Rennes railyards (54 bombed at 1430 hrs). 403 Sqn claimed 2-0-1 Fw 190s while one Spitfire of 313 Sqn was shot down.

Rennes was heavily bombed that day. According to a French book "Raids aériens sur la Bretagne" (Air raids on Britanny), 54 B-17s bombed the railyards but also the city, killing 262 people (including 71 in one shelter that took a direct hit) and wounding 172. The book also says that Fighter Command sent 142 Spitfires of 12 squadrons, 5 of the latter escorting the Rennes force and 7 the Rouen diversion force.

[Stig Jarlevik]

Laurent is correct

Roger Freeman in his Mighty Eighth War Diary clearly indicates two missions, one to Rennes and the other to Rouen

Cheers
Stig

[RSwank]

Here is an article about the Rennes raid. It mentions that 17 (of the 67 B-17s ) were from the 305th BG.

http://www.airforcemag.com/MagazineA...0994valor.aspx

[Laurent Rizzotti]

The mission report of 303rd BG is available online (http://www.303rdbg.com/missionreports/021.pdf) and is clear that Rennes was the primary target of the raid.

I also have the following about the 306th BG. It is a copy of pages 76-78 of the book “First Over Germany: A History of the 306th Bombardment Group”, by Russell A. Strong, published by Hunter Pub. Co., 1982:


"Two days later the target was the marshalling yard at Rennes and losses continued to harass the 306th. Just after the Spitfire escort left, FW-190s attacked the formation, knocking down Lt. Otto Buddenbaum's tail-end plane in the low squadron.
Flames enveloped the entire ship, but nine of the crew were able to escape and only Buddenbaum was lost. Navigator Wilton Biggs broke his ankle in landing and was immediately captured. Lt. Warren Edris, copilot, evaded capture for two months before the Gestapo apprehended him in Paris. Others on the crew who became POWs were Lt. Joseph C. Wilkins and Sgts. Robert Guthrie, Sylvester Horstmann, Robert S. Liscavage, Donald R. Huddle and Eulis E. Smith.
Sgt. Ernest T. Moriarty, a waist gunner, was one of the last men out of the ship, getting in a last burst at an attacking fighter as other crewmen were rushing past him to the rear escape hatch. Liscavage had been wounded in the first attack in his tail gun position and had to be pulled from there by Horstmann and Huddle. As they pushed him out the door, Moriarty grabbed the D ring on Liscavage's chute, so it would be sure to open. Smith had jumped first and, after the wounded man, Horstmann, Moriarty and Huddle went out in that order.
"The last I saw of the plane was a trail of smoke in a sharp downward curve," said Moriarty. The waist gunner landed in a field and was immediately surrounded by French people working there. All were eager to help; they pulled his chute out of a tree and hid it along with his flying clothing. He was bleeding from a bullet that had grazed him beneath his chin.
Soon some other Frenchmen showed up and reported that two of the crewmates were about three miles away. Moriarty picked up his escape kit and started off, walking in his stocking feet; his English boots had come off when his chute had opened.
While crossing a plowed field two more Frenchmen greeted him and asked him to come to their house. They gave him food and wine and as Germans were reported searching in the area, advised him to walk further. Moriarty crossed several fields and then lay down in some tall ferns to rest. After an hour he was up and walking again. He then followed a hay wagon, thinking it might take him to sanctuary. Two Frenchmen passed him on bicycles, stopped a bit down the road to talk and then let him know they were friendly. They took him to a nearby farmhouse where a farmer and his wife hid the flyer in their woods. After dark they retrieved him, fed him and then put him in their barn for the night.
Before dawn Moriarty was awakened, fed and put back in the woods for the day. Later in the morning two French gendarmes found Moriarty and informed him that they knew the whereabouts of three of his crew mates; they said that they would bring them there that night. During the rainy afternoon, he was brought into the house again to eat and then went to the barn to await his buddies. The gendarmes returned to tell him that the three had been captured. They identified only Wilkins by name. Moriarty deduced that another was Liscavage.
Two days later, after having been moved again, Moriarty was put in the hands of the Underground and was back in London in one of the quickest returns recorded.
Out of the front of the plane, copilot Edris landed in the back yard of a small farm, with his parachutte draped over a tree. He was so near Lamballe that the Germans were quickly out looking for him.
"Allemands, allemands, vite, vite!" shouted one of the Frenchmen nearby. Edris was quickly shoved into a pig sty where he remained hidden while a truckload of German soldiers looked the place over. After they left he was put in a chicken coop.
Edris was not in the best of shape for an evasion attempt. He had been on the raid at Lorient two days earlier, had not had any sleep on the overnight stop at Exeter, and had been routed out of bed at 0300 on the eighth to fly his "last" mission. That evening after Edris had been fed, Maurice de Frete, a businessman, appeared and he and Edris walked all of that night to get to St. Brieuc. There he finally was given a real bed in a French home and slept all day.
When evening came he was escorted on foot through St. Brieuc and on to another town where he stayed three days with a French woman and her daughter. There his Air Force ring was buried so that it would not give him away. (The ring was returned to him after the war.) Hearing that the Germans were closing in, Edris left by the back door of the house with a former French pilot as his guide. They rode on bicycles thirty miles into the country where he was put in the care of a priest. He remained there for two weeks, then another priest took him to catch a train to Paris. Jacques, a Haitian married to a French woman, was his escort on the ten-hour train ride to Paris where he spent the next six weeks in the couple's apartment.
While there Edris was visited by a very pregnant American. Edris thinks this woman "fingered" him to the Gestapo for he was arrested shortly afterwards when the apartment was raided. The next seventy-seven days he spent in solitary confinement in La Fresnes prison, undergoing endless interrogations by Gestapo agents. He was finally put on a bus with a number of newly-captured Americans, still in uniform, who viewed him skeptically because of his civilian attire. He finally convinced them of his identity during a long train ride to Oberursel, and then to Stalag Luft 3.
In the area of Rennes, three of the Luftwaffe attackers went down before the guns of the 306th: S/Sgt. Robert G. Adams and Sgts. Warren McGregor and Roy H. Gibson earning the extra clusters on their Air Medals."

Details of B-24 losses are available here:
http://www.greenharbor.com/ROHPDF/ROHMA43.pdf

[keith A]

Many thanks chaps. My interest is in the opponents of 64 Squadron and 122 Squadron, identified on this forum as Bf109G-4 of 12/JG2 and JG27 despite these being claimed as Fw190. The B-24s also identify their opponents as Fw190 with some Bf109.

It appears the B-17s were attacked by SKG 10 who lost two FW190 to the bombers or Spitfires.

regards

Keith

[Rottler]

Hello Keith,

the B-17 formation (target M/Y Rennes) encountered German fighters of the III./JG 2 and I./JG 27 and the B-24 (target M/Y Rouen) were opponents of 12./JG 2, Stab/JG 26, II./JG 26 and III./JG 54.

The German claims:

B-17
Lt Hugo Dahmer 7./JG 2 1415 hrs
Fw Friedrich May 1415 hrs 8./JG 2
Lt Karl von Lieres und Wilkau 1540 hrs 3./JG 27

B-24
Hptm Wilhelm-Ferdinand Galland Stab II./JG 26 1404 hrs
Ofw Willy Roth 4./JG 26 1405 hrs
Oblt Johannes Naumann 6./JG 26 1408 hrs
Uffz Peter Crump 5./JG 26 1410 hrs n.b. (= nicht bestätigt/not confirmed)

Spitfire
Uffz Heinz Buteweg 8./JG 2 14.12 hrs
Maj Josef Priller Stab/JG 26 1415 hrs
Obfw Adolf Glunz 4./JG 26 1406 hrs
Lt Georg-Peter Eder 12./JG 2 1402 hrs


The German losses

Fw Rudolf Holzmann 12./JG 2 verletzt, Motorbrand, Absturz 3 km westlich Dieppe, 100%
Bf 109 G-4 14984

N.N. 12./JG 2 Motorbrand, Absturz bei Benesville, FSA, 100% Bf 109 G-4 14990

Uffz Sigismund Dietz + Luftkampf Spitfire, Absturz 20 km nördlich Grandcamp über See, 100%
Bf 109 G-4 16158 gelbe 2.

Source: JFV Vol. 10/IV

Regards
Leo

[Rottler]

Addition: Uffz Sigismund Dietz of 3./JG 27.

Leo

[keith A]

Many thanks again Leo, I believe SLdr W.V. Crawford Comptpn was victor over at least one of the two 1./JG2 losses, with SLdr Kingaby making another. Very like Compton, Kingaby writes "I opened fire with 2 sec. burst cannon and M/G and I saw strike on the tail end of the fuselage. Then one elevator buckled up and tore away. Enemy aircraft flicked into a vicious spin and the other elevator departed. I did not follow him down as I was getting a long way from the bombers but I saw a parachute open out beneath me a few moments later. I claim this F.W. 190 as destroyed. I opened up to full bore again and caught up with the bombers and accompanied them home." It seems possible both pilots hit the 12./JG2 Bf109 from which the unnamed pilot took to his parachute.


Dietz would seem to be a victim of 403 Squadron.

regards

Keith