555th BS Marauder Over Unknown Target

You're assuming the intel and/or book was right.... I've taken a quick look in the transport records of 7. Armee and I see no reason to expect any Panzer Division to unload there on 7 June.

Regarding the divisions... The train transfer of DR does not appear to have begun before 14 June. Trains of G.v.B. did leave quickly after the beginning of the invasion but did not make it past la Fleche. 2.Pz.Div. did not start to move by rail until 10 June.

I can dig deeper into this, but without confirmation the information in the book is actually based on solid intel there's a good chance it will be a waste of time.

So far I've not seen a reference to indicate Montsecret was special in any way. No special installations, no extra Flak protection, etc.

 

Pat-

Several crews from the 323rd were assigned to another, much less experienced BG to help them get organized opeerationally to fly combat missions. It might have been the 386th - recall the diary entry containing the quote from Tex on the Hunt crew flying down the railway tracks adjacent to the Orne River on the 323rd's D-Day afternoon mission. Prior to the D-Day diary entry, there was an entry about helping another bomb group get organized operationally. Will get back with you on this.

I may also have the 9th Air Force bombing analysis report for June 7, 1944, which would provide further details about the mission and the aircraft from the Group Lead Flight captured in the photographs above.

Finally, I'll look up YA-V to see if it was flown primarily by any specific 323rd BG crew.

More to follow.

Jan

 

I'd say any yard is a viable target. Its location is fairly important and at the same time you can block a significant railroad.
As for its size, I'm not sure it's small compared to others in the area. German maps indicate it did not have the ramps needed to unload heavy armor. For lighter vehicles you however do not need special ramps.

 

Pat-

Skimming the formation assignment map above, the lead flight of six responsible for Box II includes aircraft from different squadrons of the same BG. At least for the 323rd BG, just about every mission included one or more flights of six (or whatever the number) that included aircraft from two different 323rd squadrons. But, the mixed flight was usually not the box lead flight. If you'll look at the mission logs for the 323rd, the squadrons are designated by B-E Squadrons. The typical box included 18 aircraft of three flights of six aircraft like the one in the diagram above. The index to the323rd missions might indicate, for instance, for Box I - E, E/D, D, which meant Box I, Flight I was six aircraft form the 456th, Box I, Flight 2 was three aircraft from the 456th (which had the flight lead) and three aircraft from the 455th, and Flight 3 was six 455th aircraft.

I only printed a hard copy of the 9th AF bombing report for the morning missions on June 7, which my dad flew. Per the 9th AF report, the 386th flew to Longpre RR Junction and to Arions (?) Longoui (?) M/Y on the morning of June 7, but did not attack either target. (The 323rd hit Pontabault Bridge that morning, with only two of the six flights able to attack targets of opportunity due to poor weather even at low altititude.) I will check the thumb drive I got from Naitonal Archives to see if the researcher included anything from the 9th AF about the afternoon mission on June 7. If not, I'll see if Roy would be kind enough to send us screen shots of the 9th AF bombing report for the June 7 afternoon missions, as my Mac can't read the TTF files on my CD containing those records.

The photograph above has to have been taken on the afternoon mission on June 7 by the 386th. Recall that the 323rd attacked Folligny M/Y on the afternoon of June 7 with excellent results. So, it's reasonable to assume tha tthe weather must have cleared up and the cloud cover perhaps burned off by the afternoon.

It's interesting to take a look at page 576 of Capt. Harry C. Butcher's diary, "My Three Years with Eisenhower", in the context of Pat's point about the railyard and RR junction above. Butcher writes, "Around midnight [on June 10 or 11, 1944], de Guingand had come over to our war room and given Ike the picture. I happened to be present and recal the main point, which was that because we had busted most of the bridges across the Seine, the Germans couldn't move reinforcements or reserves from the east direct---they had to go around Paris. So the air people, whose meeitng at Sanmore de Guingand had just attended, were laying on more bridge busitng and marshalling yard destruction in the Paris area. They had spotted ten vital bridges across the Loire River to the Ssouth of our battle area, and had laid on attacks to blast them. Overall, while our build up was slower by some twenty-four hours than we hoped or planned, so was that of Jerry. He had up to yesterday got some seventeen divisions agaisnt us, whereas we figured on twnety. The plan of bombing the transportaiton targets has paid well; if we had left their rilroad yards, their bridges intact, we'd have been pushed off the beaches."

With the maps and historical note above, Pat's painted a good picture of the post-invasion air strategy. The 386th appears to have done a great job of splitting up a section of the M/Y. Given the shortage of supplies, it would be interesting to know how long it took the Germans to get that section of the tracks passable again. It also looks like there might have been a few box cars on the sideling. They missed what looks like the repiar shed. It must have been quite frustrating for the German logistics specialists.

It sounds like the 386th was hoping to hit a troop passenger car as it rolled into or unloaded in the yard. There are interesting acounts of 323rd missions where that happened. The bombardiers reported hitting one troop transport car as it unloaded and "looking the Jerries in the eye". Another interesting photo is of the 323rd raid on about June 22 at Armentierres M/Y. The Box II lead flight of six scored a direct hit on a freight car of munitions as it rolled into the yard -the plume of smoke billowed up to the bombing altitude of 12,000 feet. The photograph of the plume is spectacular. The marshalling yards were generally very heavily defended following the invasion. The 323rd was shot up badly by 88MM guns at Armetierres.

It would be interesting to see a plot of all of the B-26 targets from June 7 through the fall of Caen around July 19 or 20, and compare it to the locations of the Germans and Allied troops on the corresponding days. (The B-26's were the aircraft that shouldered most of the bridge busiting and railyard destruciton missions from March through the invasion and during the Battle of Noarmady.) It would be fiarly easy to complie the B-26 targets list for each day from the 9th AF bombing results report cover pages, which list them. If there's any interest, I can ehlp with the 9th AF targets.

-Jan

 

The 410th BG targeted a Villers RJ on the morning of June 7 with Fair results on target of opportunity.
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Perhaps the 486th wasn't privy to the 9th AF bombing effectiveness reports. ;-) The 322nd and 323rd were the oldest and most experienced. And we all know the boys of the 323rd were by far the best looking.

 

Hi Pat,
unfortunately I have little information on units that were outside of the 7.Armee sector/control before the invasion. I do have some maps with possible routes, but they are low in quality and are little more than an assessment of the road network.

As you may know the Pz.Lehr Division was not subordinated to 7. Armee when the invasion started. Instead it was OKW reserve as were the 1., 12. and 17.SS-Pz.(Gren.)Div. and the I.SS-Pz.K. Other OKW reserves in the west were Pz.Gr. West (a.k.a. Panzer-Armee West and later as the 5. Panzer Armee) and 1.Fs.Armee.
The famous 'Panzerreserve' is often used to refer to Pz.Gr.West but it was no where near a close knit as the name implies. A an example the 2., 21. and 116.Pz.Div. were actually H.Gr.B troops. This essentially leaves the SS divisions mentioned earlier and the Pz.Lehr Division. The 1.SS was no were near combat ready, 17.SS was quite far to the south and both Lehr and 12.SS were fairly quickly committed. 9. and 10.SS-Pz.Div. (with II.SS-Pz.K.) had been under the Gruppe until late March, but were in the East on D-Day. The position of certain independent battalion sized units is also interesting, but they make little difference for this particular topic.
[hr]
Although not entirely relevant for this particular discussion, it might be interesting to post a quote to illustrate the supply difficulties of 7. Armee. This quote comes from the monthly report of the transport department of the Armee, and was included under 7 June.

The responsibility for RR repairs was in the hands of special engineers: I./Eisb.Pi.Rgt.6. This battalion was under command of Hptm. Bethge. On 7 June he was ordered (1) to inspect and improve the stretch between Vire-St.Lo and (2) deploy a company on the stretch Rennes-Dol (de Bretagne) to repair the damage from aerial attacksas quickly as possible.
The next day Le Mans, La Fleche and Sable were identified as key junctions in the network. Priority of the engineers was to be given to these locations.
On the 9th several officers reorganized and assigned the responsibility for the repair of the different stretches. This was considered to be the most efficient way to carry out repairs.
On the 10th an inspection of the stations of Alencon and Le Mesle showed that they had been destroyed and that even opening a line through them would require at least 8 days. An inspection of the destroyed Loire bridges in Nantes was also ordered. It revealed repairs would take a long time. Special steel workers from OT were already deployed.

There are many more interesting references to repair work durign the rest of the month. The repair of the Loire bridge north of Tours.

 

Very interesting. The quotes paint a picture of frustration.

Perhaps those maps were the best available at the time. I ran across what looked like a good map of road and rail routes in France used by the Allies. It had some subscription requirements, and the link I sent to Pat did not open. Will try again to see if it might be made available to the forum.

Thanks for taking the time to post this information. The Transportation Plan came at a price as you know. I will pass your post along to my dad's tent mate in the war, who was squadron and group lead navigator for the 456th. The aircrews were so busy preparing for the next mission between March and the invasion , I don't have the impression they got much feedback on anything other than where their bombs hit relative to the desired impact point. My dad told me they had second thoughts about targeting marshaling yards and certain bridges in populated areas, but they did what they were told to do. In the context of the evolution of modern warfare, strategic bombing was relatively new at the time. In our modern context, it's easy to forget.

 

The maps are sufficient in quality. The problem is the microfilm quality: both low resolution and black and white, while the originals were in color. The best information can probably be found in the records of the Armee-Pioniere-Führer but I do not have access to those records.

 

Here's a basic map showing RR and Hwy lines for quick reference.

https://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.history.army.mil%2Fimages%2Freference%2Fnormandy%2Fts%2Fmd%2F154-155.jpg&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.history.army.mil%2Fhtml%2Freference%2Fnormandy%2Fts%2Fmd%2Fmd6.htm&docid=OA_7o8AJVhlUvM&tbnid=PGcLLAXju-6IRM%3A&w=3228&h=2068&hl=en-us&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim

 

Original German map. Blocked railroads on 13 June.
[attachment=232]

 

Great map, offers excellent insight to the German logistical dilemmas. Thank you very much for posting this. Any chance of higher resolution version? Would like to print off a larger version for my own reference and to send to Frank Burgmeier, one of the lead navigators for the 323rd from Dec. 1943 thru Dec. 23, 1944. He would thoroughly enjoy seeing it.

Thank you, again,

Jan

 

Thank you, Pat. Excellent rsource for downloading.

Putting oneself in the shoes of a German logistics officer charged with getting reisources to the battle front by rail using the June 13 map, it's really hard to find a route that might work. See if you can figure out how to get a box from Paris to Caen by rail!

Looking at the 323rd's missions as a sample of those flown by the 10 or so B-26 groups in the ETO, between March 8 and May 11, it looks like the 323rd carried out about 16 raids on marshalling yards in France and Belgium. After attacking the marshalling yards, the 323rd focused on bridges, no-balls sites, industrial targets (like ball bearing manufacturers) and coastal defenses. On May 12, the 323rd went after its first bridge, the Liege Railway Bridge with three boxes of 12 aircraft each in flights of four. (This was a change in tactics from the typical attack by two boxes of 18 aircraft in flights of six made to provide more autonomy to individual aircraft in siting the target --- the narrowness and "porousness" of the bridges made them difficult targets - bombs could pass right through the girders without hitting the structur.) Between May 25 and June 4, the 323rd flew about 11 missions against railway and highway bridges, with crews often flying more than one mission per day. From June 7 through early August, it looks like the 323rd was sent to at least 13 more transportation targets (M/Y, Highway and Railway Bridges).

Before the Marauders attacked transportation targets, leaflets were dropped urging French and Belgian civilians to evacuate to minimize civilian casualties. The leaflets also meant that the transportation targets were well defended. The 323rd ran three really rough missions druing its 11-day bridge busting effort just prior to the invasion. The mission records reflect many one-engine and crash landings at emergency fields at Maston as well as aircraft shot down or blown up over or near the targets.

Ambrose states that the Allies dropped 76 kilotons of bombs (equal to more than 7 atomic bombs over Hiroshima) on the French railway system. Per Ambrose, 8 of 9 railway bridges over the Seine between Paris and the coast had been destroyed by D-Day and 7 or 9 highway bridges over the Seine between Paris and the coas had been taken out or damaged prior to the invasion.

During the war, the Marauder crews didn't get much feedback on how they were contributing to the war effort. Then, just after the war, perhaps due to what seems like a personal grudge of Truman, all but a very small number of Marauders were destroyed for scrap metal. (The Truman Committee had tried to get the Marauder killed as unsafe in its early operational days. For that reason, several 323rd aircraft bore nicknames like "Truman's Folly", which had to be changed after Roosevelt died. Perhaps Truman was never able to get his loss on the Marauder issue from sticking in his craw, and/or he did not like that its crews had proven him plainly wrong. Far from being unsafe, the B-26 had fewer casualties per sortie than any other bomber in the war, and its crews were able to bomb with relatively remarkable accuracy compared to other bombers like the heavies, which have garnered most historical attention. The Marauder could take a terrible beaitng and still get its crew home alive. And the crews loved her for that.) The Marauder crews never felt their contributions were acknowledged. The destruciton of their beloved aircraft seemed a refusal of their contributions and a betrayal of the aircraft's gift of life to her crews. Both hurt.

So, the June 13, 1944 German map will offer Frank, a lead navigator for the 323rd on many of those transportation target missions, a visual picture of what a game-changer takng out the French and Belgian transportation system was. I wish my dad had seen it. It might have made the human costs of those missions seem no less harsh, but perhaps easier to rationalize.

A little map means a lot to those guys.

Thanks again,

Jan