Charlie's Church

With some help from the the sound track of 'The Horse Soldiers' in my ear phones

A second confirmed attack on the railway embankment by F.O. Lindquist of 411 Squadron during the 16:30 patrol (Combat Film No. 5016):

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A more polished, full frame version:

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I am running trials with different filters in 'Video Cleaner'. Its slow, tedious work, but when you hit the right combination for a particular frame, it really is magical stuff!

More follows.

Regards,

Pat

 

Hi Stephen,

Bomb damage would not in and of itself prevent the two outstanding locations from being determined. More problematic would be road junction realignment and overgrown, disused railway embankments. The shed in the calvary scene could also now no longer exist.

I am not particularly expecting to find a church spire in either scene, as almost certainly the camera was not activated as he swept past the church. The spire may well be the church in Boissey, but this cannot be confirmed in my view.

I am currently looking at other pilots' footage from the afternoon patrol to see if their attack locations can be determined. A few scenes are quite good quality, for example that of F.O. Ireland, attacking parked up vehicles on a road bend. There is a very distinctive house about 100 yards from the road in the same scene.

If we can find this, or other scenes from other pilots on that same patrol, it should help to put more 'pins on the map' and therefore give us a better idea of the extent of ground covered by the Squadron that afternoon.

It appears to me that the area of the patrol described in the ORB as:

needs to be read as a very general description. I am currently concentrating my search in the area between Lisieux and the River Seine (hopefully the river was not crossed!).

I'll post a still from F.O. Ireland's footage tonight and see if anyone can spot it.

Regards,

Pat

 

Hi All,

I believe we may have the location of the 2nd attack..the one at the 'T' junction...not certain but it looks very good

Today, I was looking at IGN cover flown in 1947 for the Trun area following a find of several reconnaissance photos on the Australian War Memorial site pertaining to the Battle of the Falaise Gap, and trying to match locations therein. That task needs a new thread of its own, but one of the plates in the IGN archive caught my eye because of the huge diagonal crack in the glass. While silently congratulating the IGN archive staff for their diligent work in preserving the plate, my eye was traveling up the crack and suddenly the dot circled in yellow below caught my attention:

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The plate is centered on the village of Gueprei, just west of Trun and circled in red above.

Below is an IGN map showing the candidate 'T' Junction on the D13 Falaise-Trun road circled in red:

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The shed is no longer there, with the IGN archive indicating it was removed sometime between 1994 and 1996.

Lets look at two stills from the footage again:

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Below are extracts from IGN cover flown in 1947, 1955 and 1976:

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There are two issues which require caution; the lack of a calvary and the ridge line of the roof. I know I argued against a road sign in favour of a calvary crucifix earlier in the thread, but having seen the old cast iron road sign at the junction as shown on the Google Maps 'street view' here, I wonder is that what we are seeing in the second gun camera still above?

As for the offset roof ridge line in the first still, I have to admit its difficult to be sure its anything other than centered in the IGN extracts, most especially in the 1976 photo, which appears exceptionally clear, perhaps having been shot in clear winter air.

Anyhow, that's my case for the location - what do you guys think?

Regards,

Pat

 

Hi John,

Yes, I think it looks very good; certainly far better that any other junction I've looked at.

I was a little concerned also about the apparent lack of a curve to the right on Google Maps until I went into 'street view' here. The curve is now there and I suspect the view of the curve in the opening frame of the footage is accentuated by the 'Y' junction down the road aways.

There is no digitised NCAP cover unfortunately, but I would be surprised if a manual search of their archive did not produce at least one frame. IIRC, this section of the road is part of what was later dubbed 'The Shambles', by the survey team who counted the German losses following the Battle of the Falaise Gap.

Regards,

Pat

 

Hi Allan,

I would like if the shed, as it appears in the gun camera footage, could be confirmed by a local resident...who is old enough to remember it as it was in 1944!

Tried for a ground photo of the junction in Jean Paul Pallaud's 'Ruckmarsch!', but no luck.

Regards,

Pat

 

Hi Stephen,

I am still trawling to see if there are any ground photos showing the shed before it was demolished in the 1990s. So far no luck, with the closest 'approach' being a photograph on page 36 in issue 8 of 'After The Battle' magazine in an article titled 'The Battle of the Falaise Pocket'.

The photograph shows the bridge over the River Dives at Mandeville as it appeared in 1975 during a battlefield tour by the author. The Bailey Bridge, now removed, is shown with a view south-eastwards up the hill on the D13 towards our 'T' junction. However, the shed is obscured from view by the hedgerow on the left side of the road.

Below is a live IGN map showing the location of the bridge:

<iframe width="600" height="400" frameborder="5" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" src="http://www.geoportail.gouv.fr/embed/visu.html?c=-0.02383330352030775,48.86549900524416&z=0.000021457672120657332&l=GEOGRAPHICALGRIDSYSTEMS.MAPS.3D::GEOPORTAIL:OGC:WMTS==aggregate(1)&permalink=yes" allowfullscreen></iframe>​

Today's Google Maps 'street view' from the bridge looking in the same direction as the 1975 ATB photo is here.

So close...

Regards,

Pat

 

Hi Ellen,

My gut tells me yes, but I would still like to get hold of a ground view of the shed. As the Falaise/Trun road was used by the Germans during their retreat in August, I am hopeful that it will have been captured on either footage or a still shot during that period. No luck so far though.

I even tried Googling for images using the search terms 'rue Trun Falaise 19xx' last night where xx were the two digits of every year from 1944 to 1996! - thankfully my better half is fully understanding of the time I spent on the web late at night

Regards,

Pat

 

Hi Ellen,

Its probably a waiting game with SINBAD to see what they can turn up.

I was reading Major-General Richard Rohmer's 'Patton's Gap' today and I happened to flick onto page 201 showing two reconnaissance photos. We have located the lower of the two, frame ?016 of sortie 414/505 flown on the 17th August, as being the village of Trun - see post #11 of the 'Extract's Patton's Gap (430 Sq RCAF)' thread for details.

Here is this frame again for reference:

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Note the angle of view is not directly vertical, resulting in reasonable line of sight to the gables of some buildings. I am sure a first generation copy of this print would show even more detail if it was scanned at high resolution. This frame at least appears to have been shot from the oblique camera of the Mustang or Spitfire of No. 414 Squadron, RCAF.

I note with interest that this frame is less than 3 miles from the location of the shed! :sleepy:

I wonder if we could track down the rest of the frames from this sortie, would we be lucky enough to get a glimpse of the shed's gable as seen in your Dad's gun camera footage? If so, and the quality was good enough to allow a reasonable comparison, that would sell the location for me at least

Just now searched the NCAP site using the term "414/505" and received a negative result, which is not surprising as No. 414 Squadron was Canadian, rather than British or American. There is however, a good collection of reconnaissance cover pertaining to Canadian squadron's in the Laurier Military History Archive and we have an existing thread opened by Dale titled 'Canadian Aerial Photo Source'. Phil has done great work in locating some of these frames as the site is not that easy to search. Their collection of Normandy cover is here.

Volunteers needed :angel:

Regards,

Pat

 

Thank you Phil!

The very first box Phil worked on has three frames showing the shed!
Phil's kml overlay file is available to download here (86.27Kbs). The sortie is 400/650 flown on the 5th August. Frames 3038, 3039 and 3040 show the shed (arrowed blue below):

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Note the 'second' shed is just a slight misalignment of the overlays.

Anyone able to find any more sorties in the LMH Archive covering our AoI?

Regards,

Pat

 

Direct links to the three frames on the LMHA site:

• 3038 (Shed is at upper left)
• 3039 (Shed is at middle left)
• 3040 (Shed is at lower left)

Which one do readers think we should look to view at high resolution?

Regards,

Pat

 

Thanks John,

Before I look for a high resolution copy, I want to be sure there is nothing else in the LMH Archive shot from a more oblique angle. The gable we need to see appears to be in shadow in sortie 400/650.

Regards,

Pat