navigation routes for RAF special duties squadron

[hautemarnechris]

I'd be extremely grateful for any suggestions as to how resolve a navigation problem I've encountered when researching the crash of an RAF Stirling in July 1944 which was carrying Special Air Service troops on a mission in North Eastern France.

I'm trying to reconstruct the route the aircraft took by using a document in the British National Archives (AIR 8837) which I think was prepared at 38 Group. The information it contained was used to task aircraft from the group's squadrons. My understanding is that navigators at squadron level would flesh out the route using known flak sites, the latest weather forecast, etc.

The navigation instruction in AIR 8837 gives the following information : the lat and longitude (deg, min, sec) of the drop zone - in this case 48deg29min01secN 5deg10min58secE. Routing information is as follows- my comments in italics:
Base (RAF Fairford) - B8 -B9 - 49deg 28 N 00.05W(just off Le Havre) - 0 deg at coast (Villers-sur-mer) - C1 - C2 -C5 - Lake at 48deg 15N 04 deg 22E (Lac D'orient near Troyes) - DZ (as above close to joinville) - RSR (this means return same route)

The latlongs are not a problem - I can identify those. The problem is the B8, B9, C1, etc codes. I suspect they represent N-S air corridors running from east to west from A out in the Atlantic to B0 @ 4degW up to C0 @ about 1deg E thru C up to about D0 @ 6degE. In other words each 'corridor' is about 5 deg in width.

I have looked at the navigation instructions from the same document for other missions in France and they seem to fit that pattern.

Has anybody come across these codes before? I've asked a couple of ex-navigators but they weren't able to shed any light on these codes. I would be very grateful for any advice.

[Jaap Woortman]

Dear Hautemarnechris,

A friend of mine has asked me to send you this information.
In NA AIR 20/8835 is a sheet that gives you the location of K7 till L9.
If you send me an p.m. with your email address I will send you the table.

It are turning points in the fligth plan of planes of No. 38 Group when they were
flying a mission to Western Europe.

We are looking for the coordinates of the Turning Points(TPs) of A1 till K6.
Have you been able to find these?

Jaap Woortman

[Soren Flensted]

Hi Jaap
I take it that this only applies to France, Belgium and the Nederlands as I have never seen anything like these codes when studying the flights with supplies to Denmark. Here you get Lat and longitude.

[hautemarnechris]

I'm sorry not to have responded sooner. I have sent Jap a personal reply to his email.

Re the flights to Denmark: as I explained to Jap, I think 38 Group War Room (which produced the navigation plans for its squadrons) adopted the coding system for turning points because the high volume of missions to Northern France in July and August combined with the fact that 38 Group was using a standard "bus route" into Northern France (see AIR 8837). Thus there would have been a lot of repetition of lat/longs if they had continued to provide the turning points in clear. It seems to me that the coding systme was adopted to reduce message sizes and to avoid transcription errors (although I can't prove that).

AIR 8820 shows that by November (by which time missions to France ended) 38 Group had returned to specifying turning points in clear. For the most part the post-November missions are to Scandinavia and were relatively low in number compared to 38 Group's activities during the Summer of 1944. I imagine (but haven't checked it out) that the "bus route" concept for routing missions didn't apply to Scandinavia and therefore coded turning points weren't useful.