23 July 1942, LW in North Brittany

[Mikkel Plannthin]

My translation of the text:

In July last year I was given the task by the Royal Air Force to fly to France to bring the report on the transportation of ammunition from Germany to the German positions by the Atlantic sea. In particular I was to observe the railway line to Brest, and when I saw a freight train on this route, I was to shoot at it with my machine guns and with small bombs.

One afternoon when in the air, alone as usual, I observed a train that I could see carried war material. I dived from approx. 300 meters so far down that I could fire on the train and opened a heavy fire against it with the result that the train stopped and the locomotive blew up - at least it developed a big cloud of steam, and the bombs, I threw, was not silent, of course. In short, a squadron Messerschmidt machines scrambled and began to circle around me, and they have probably shot at me. I counted seven machines in total. I tried to get my Spitfire to rise as quickly as possible, all while I shot at the German machines. It is difficult to say exactly how many I got shot down, but it is my impression that five or six of them were hit and crashed to the ground with a tail of smoke behind them in the air. At that time, I suppose about 800 meters up in the air, I suddenly noticed that my machine started to sputter, and I could not get it to turn left. The machine had apparently been hit, at least I lost altitude, and I then tried an emergency landing. It failed, however, totally as I hit a web of power lines leading to a power station, when I approached the landing with a speed of 400 kilometres per hour.

As already written to you from the camp, my machine did a somersault and came down upside down. One wing was torn off, and only with the greatest difficulty I was able to get out of the machine. I was very surprised, as I realised that I was not injured in any way – I did not even get one bruise.

Source:
Thalbitzer, Billy, Med RAF for Danmark – Historien om Jørgen Thalbitzer, Hasselbalch, Copenhagen, 1945.

Regards

Mikkel Plannthin

[Jérémie Tarpon]

Hello Mikkel,

Thank you for translating this letter for us. As you have mentioned, its content is very surprising. Some parts are plausible:
- The objective of the 23/7/42 mass Rhubarb was mainly to stop trains on the Morlaix-Brest railway line and 234 Sqdn actually attacked the Landerneau station.
- The description of his crash-landing matches what is reported elsewhere.
But most of it is definitely imaginary:
- Thalbitzer was not alone,
- his Spitfire carried no bombs,
- 234 Sqdn was attacked by Fw 190s rather than by Messerschmitts,
- he surely did not shot down any German fighter.

A possible explanation may be that Thalbitzer knew his letter would be censored at his PoW camp and thus intentionaly gave false information.

Best regards,

Jérémie

[Mikkel Plannthin]

Jérémie
You are welcome. I agree with your remarks on the plausible/imaginary parts of the description. Even though I still find the story of Jørgen Thalbitzer interesting.

He was the only Danish pilot to evade a PoW camp, and he actually made it to Denmark. He coincidently met his father at a train station, but lost his life crossing the waters to Sweden.

His life as PoW is briefly described in Willam Ash's "Under the Wire" from 2006.

Regards

Mikkel Plannthin

[Gildas]

Dear all,

Working at Guipavas near Brest, I several times went to Landerneau recently to try to elucidate a few WW II aircraft crashes. I had a lot of chance to find a picture that gave the answer for one. This second is for the moment a mistery.
But the witnesses I met, aged at least 83, remembered the words of a farmer who lived close to a crash site, north west but very close to Landernau (not five miles), west of the station. The place was unfortunately very built later.
The farmer being dead today, it isn’t possible for the moment to say if the info he gave about a pilot can certainly be linked to the aircraft, but :
« I was very happy that the germans never found the pilot who was hidden in the bushes of the embankment, moreover that I could see him from where I was, and they were all around ».
Another accout says he fed him there using a branch not to leave foot steps.

If I write this, it is because Gal Roland Bohn (also dead), in his books « Raids aériens sur la Bretagne » or « Aerial raids over Brittany » wrote :
One Whirlwind shot down west of the station, pilot killed for 23 July 1942.If he does mention the Spitfire escort, no loss reported.
Both Whirlwind pilots were reported as MIA. So couldn’t this crash be the one of Thalbitzer. Nothing for the moment can let me know if this aircraft was upside down. I just heard the pilot this farmer helped would have been put in touch with the french underground in the evening.

But what was the power station, just a little building that we call « transformateur », that you can find eveywhere, or something bigger ?

The following web site http://www.spitfires.ukf.net/production.htm says « near Plouescat »...

New accounts may be of interest, but there are vey few witnesses left today

Regards
Gildas

[Flitzer]

Long film on Rudi Pflanz funeral.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTHTM75pGkw