Horsa Crash at SME Hospice Wall

Hi Folks,

Some readers may recall a while back that we had a thread on the old 'Battlebus' Forum relating to a Horsa crash site which turned out to be at the rear of the Sainte Mere Eglise Hospice. This building was used by the 82nd Airborne medics as an aid station, designated 'Sainte Mere Eglise Aid Station #2'. Below is the photograph which set this quest in train:

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The photo is taken from page 71 of Philippe Esvelin's 'Forgotten Wings' and is reproduced here with permission. The location of this crash site I recall had intrigued me for quite some time and it remained on the 'wanted list' until I happened on another shot of the same crash site somewhere on the web. This second photo has some critical additional detail:

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The large house or chateau in the background is very distinctive and I know of only one such building in the American airborne landing zones on the Cotentin - the Sainte Mere Eglise Hospice. There is a good aerial post invasion photo of the building which I have reproduced below with the Hospice indicated thereon inside the yellow rectangle:

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The yellow rectangle is zoomed to below:

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Note the gap in the wall at the southern end at the rear of the building with the broken masonry resting in the field. The Horsa wreck is removed but the line-of-sight we see in the second ground photograph is a good match for the dashed yellow line.

The old postcard below shows two 'spikes' on the ridge of the roof, which I have circled green - not sure of the correct architecture term, but whatever they are, I am pretty sure they are also present in the second ground shot of the crash site:

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So, it looks like the Horsa, flying in an easterly direction, landed in the garden of the Hospice/Aid Station, with the cockpit impacting the wall with obvious catastrophic results.

The location clincher came when eagle -eyed Niels spotted the three white invasion stripes on the port side wing in the British Pathe clip here (BP Film ID 1821.02). The three stripes can be seen in the fork of the letter 'Y' of the word 'ONLY' in still #19 below:

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Well spotted Niels

We let the thread rest there on the 'Battlebus' Forum - and then the server crashed and the rest is history

Back to the present - I was looking for something else the other night and came across this Signal Corps photo which was not captioned and which I had not seen before:

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I recognised the southern gable of the Hospice/Aid Station straight away. There are a number of photographs in Michel de Trez' book 'Sainte-Mere-Eglise: Photographs of D-Day - 6 June 1944' which confirms the location of this new photo showing the two German medics. Two things spring out of that photo - one is the German medic facing the camera, I am pretty sure he is one and the same guy in the two far more famous photos which were splashed around the world on front pages soon after D-Day:

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The four Americans in the first photo are named by Michel de Trez as (L-R) Doc Ludwig J. Cibelli, Doc Byford I. Hall, Doc Pete Suer and Doc Dan McIlvoy - at least I presume the four names are those of the Americans and do not include the German!

Anyway, what do you guys think - is the German the same guy we see in the new photo of him with the red cross armband? Note he seems to have a ring on the second finger of his right hand, just like the famous photo where Doc McIlvoy is offering him a cigarette.

Does anyone see the second thing which jumps out of the new photo of the two German medics?

You'll get a virtual Hershey bar if you spot it

Regards,

Pat

 

Hi Kevin,

Yes, well spotted; I think it is the trailing edge of the port side wing - the same wing which Niels found on the BP footage.

Does anyone know the rank of the German medic? He seems to have the full attention of the four American doctors (if it is the same guy), so I think they are probably of equal rank. If so, he is probably a doctor too - perhaps a captain or major?

Thanks,

Pat

 

Thanks Niels,

That would tie with him being a doctor rather than just a medic would it not?

Regards,

Pat

 

Thanks Niels,

It would be nice if we could track down this guy and find out a bit about him.

Apparently Major Dan 'Doc' McIlvoy, Regimental Surgeon 505th PIR, was posted missing for the first two days of the Invasion and only arrived at the Hospice on D+2, just in time to help with the evacuation of the American, French and German wounded from the Aid Station.

He had been mis-dropped to the north of Sainte Mere Eglise where he managed to set up an aid station behind the German lines. It is possible then that the two men had worked together before these pictures were taken. Below is another photo showing this German officer from p. 83 of 'Sainte Mere Eglise' by Alexandre Renaud:

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It looks to me like all these ground photos showing the group at the gate were taken at the same time, probably on the 8th June.

Regards,

Pat

 

Hi All,

I was looking at Frame 1064 of Sortie US30/4108, flown on the 8th June, on the NCAP site last night and discovered the Horsa is just visible at the bottom edge. You will need a paid NCAP account to zoom the low resolution version enough to make out the glider, fully in the garden of the Hospice, except for the cockpit and forward fuselage which are clearly protruding through the wall into the field at the back of the property.

The glider outline is not that clear except for the three sets of invasion stripes due to loss of image quality inherent in all photographs at the edges. If you look above the letter 'U' of the caption section reading '(US 30/4108)', you will see her materialise from the murky edge detail.

If anyone is wondering what to ask their better half for this Christmas, what better that a subscription to NCAP :idea:

For those of you who fail to persuade, I'll post an extract here soon

Regards,

Pat

 

Hi Charles,

Below is the promised extract from NCAP_ACIU_US30_4108_1064 flown on the 8th June:

Image Credit: RCAHMS/www.ncap.org.uk​

I increased the contrast to an exaggerated level to make the Horsa's profile stand out. In so doing, I lost the garden wall which is running parallel to and just in front of the leading edge of the wings. Despite the massive impact, the tail section appears to be still attached to the main body but I presume it's nonetheless sustained major damage if the ground photos are any indication.

Yes, you are correct, the footage is being shot from the spotter plane which is casting the shadow.

I don't recall anything in the Sainte Mere Eglise Airborne Museum on this particular glider when I was there in July but I was trying to keep an eye on my young lad William and the rest of the Irish group, so I may have missed it. Does anyone know if this glider is mentioned anywhere in local accounts? It would be great to track down her airborne number.

Regards,

Pat

 

Hi Francois,

I have the £40 package - 'Zoomable Images and Finding Aids' - see this page for details of it and the cheaper 'Zoomable Images' option. The extra bucks gets you access to the sortie plot indexes which can be useful but they need to get them indexed correctly on the site.

Regards,

Pat

 

Hi All,

A belated thanks to Hans for the above link!

I have been contacted by Forum member Joan Stack, daughter of Corporal Frank Stanley Stachnik (36629189) asking if we might be able to confirm if the photograph below from her father's papers shows the same glider at the Sainte Mere Eglise Hospice:

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There is no doubt in my mind that it is the same glider.

Corporal Stachnik was a member of the 320th Glider Field Artillery and a passenger on this glider. Unsurprisingly, he was injured in the landing and was pulled from the wreckage by the two GIs in the photo.

Joan has supplied two names as possible crew for the glider:

• Pilot: 1st Lt. Joe W. Herriage (O-889834), 77th TCS, 435th TCG
• Co-Pilot: Flight Officer Howard W. Davis (T-60720) 77th TCS, 435th TCG

Both men are listed as KIA, 6th June on page 138 of Philippe Esvelin's 'D-Day Gliders' and in this author's other book, 'Forgotten Wings', as the crew of Glider #1, 2nd Serial, 2nd Echelon of Mission Elmira out of Welford on the evening of the 6th June.

The only concern I would have with this crew listing is that the Welford glider lift for Elmira consisted of 38 Horsas and 12 Wacos. My understanding is that Wacos would have been placed at the front of the flight and therefore, presumably, the glider marked as #1 would be a Waco, would it not?

In any event, any help which we can afford Joan would be greatly appreciated.

I done a Google on just Corporal Stachnik's serial number and found a very interesting 24th Evacuation Hospital Morning Report for the 6th October 1944 in which he is listed under the heading 'Roster of Enlisted Personnel Attached Unassigned Sick in Hospital'. I have extracted the entry below from page 38 of the PDF:

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This document resides in the archives of the 7th Armoured Division site 7tharmddiv.org. The link to the PDF (96.0 Mb) is here.

It therefore appears that he either became ill or was wounded in Holland, in addition to the severe injuries he received in the glider landing in Normandy. Joan has asked if we can shed further insight into her father's time in Normandy...and Holland also now that we know he was there.

Regards,

Pat