I apologize for posting something I should not have posted in this area of the forum. I will not repeat my mistake Chuck
No harm done Chuck, Its fine to report coordinates from documents - which are rarely accurate enough to pinpoint a crash site in any case. The only C-47 crash site on the Cotentin that I know of to be in the public domain is that of 42-92868, now safely underneath a hotel on the southern edge of Sainte Mere Eglise Regards, Pat
I have not seen this topic before but I am interested in Hobbs's testimony since a long time for the reason you know. No, the C-47 was not "probably"... I am sure the C-47 was 42-93065. Which is also interesting is that he say to have another C-47 'in a distance'. In the same area the other C-47 would be Risley's plane and many of you know where she crashed. It's a long time I am trying to determine which was the road followed by Hobbs group but I am not successful because of the lack of information @Pat: I don't know which are the meaning of the letters you have put on the AP photo but if it's the possible location of the landing of the horsa you can eliminate letters A & B because the information we got from different reports indicate Saas's crash site north of a line between these two letters. BTW I have a higher resolution of the AP photograph (I mean 2000 x 2000 pixels) and I can see a glider in the field just SW of the one marked 'C' but I think it's a CG-4A Another reflexion.. Saas and Risley crashed around 06:18 and Hobbs landed around 09:00, 7 June 1944
Hi Patrick, The letters do not refer to any possible landing or crash sites; they are used only to tie the three images together. However, not too far away, I have found a massive hole in a hedgerow on existing digitised NCAP cover flown on the 8th June. At first glance it looked like a well worn gateway with farm animal tracks leading into and out of the feature. My farming eye though wondered at the size of the 'tracks' and I decided to check for pre-invasion cover of the same hedgerow, eventually finding some in an RAF sortie flown on the 3rd June. In this frame, the light is excellent and the image shows a perfect hedgerow with no gap :exclamation: Provided its not a stray bomb crater, it now looks to my untrained eye that the 'farm animal tracks' might be burned grass from exploding fuel, indicating a power plane crash site. In my view, its almost certainly too big for a crashed glider location, unless the glider exploded on impact. I next checked IGN cover flown in 1947 and, although obviously some regrowth has occurred in the intervening three years, there is still evidence of the impact. The screenshot below is zoomed enough to prevent the metal detector brigade finding the site :s I'll open a new thread in the closed 'Green Room' and show you guys the location which, hopefully, is a new site and I don't end up with egg on my face :angel: Regards, Pat
Hi All, I haven't had much enthusiasm from the guys for the possible C-47 crash site in the 'Green Room' area, so let's hit this from a different angle. What was the extend and location of the flooding behind Utah Beach in June 1944? If we knew that, then the hunt for this Horsa might be somewhat easier. Below is an un-dated recon photo which clearly shows the flood line in the marshland and adjoining fields sometime during the summer of 1944: As can be seen from the GE finder chart, it shows at least some of our present AoI, including my...a poorly received gap hedgerow - which, BTW shows no sign of damage, so this photo must be prior to D-Day. If anyone wants a higher resolution copy of this photo, it can be downloaded from the ADrive 'cloud' here (11.8MBs) Its password protected, so if you want it, just send me a PM. Regards, Pat
Hi All, I have been doing a bit of digging in the NCAP archive again, this time looking for Sortie Index Plots for the area behind Utah Beach and inland thereof. There is an interesting RAF sortie, 140/0334, which was flown by Squadron Leader Charles Longley DFC on the 17th June in very good weather. I have extracted the run which he made over what appears to be part of our present AoI below: Image Credit: RCAHMS/www.ncap.org.uk The direction of flight is northwestwards and the camera run commences with frames 3125 (port camera) and 4114 (starboard camera). As of this date, there are no frames digitised in the archive from this sortie, but four of them, 4125-4128, were picked up in a search we done back in April 2011 in the Foucarville area. I have uploaded the search result pdf to the ADrive cloud here (937.1KBs) if anyone wants to have a look at them - these are low resolution proofs of course! BTW, Squadron Leader Charles Longley DFC was killed on the 2nd October 1944 while flying with the same squadron, No. 140 RAF. I see from their Wiki page here that they were equipped with PR Mosquitos. What exactly the purpose of sortie 140/0334 was on the 17th June I know not - seems strange as the entire 400 odd frames appear to be of areas behind the Allied lines. So, if we can narrow the search area for Capt Hobbs's glider to within S/Ldr Longley's flight path, we will at least have some good cover to look over On another tack, can anyone confirm that the three gliders seen landing in wet marshland between time marks 7:47 and 8:05 in the British Movietone footage here are all Wacos? Thanks, Pat
Hi Chuck, Delighted to help where possible. At first I thought the middle glider in the footage (the one flying away from the camera) was a Horsa but I think now its a Waco like the other two. We had looked at this footage before to see if its possible to locate the area in shot but we only came up with a 'possible' for the NE area of the Boutteville Marshes - see this Google Maps 'street view' looking south from the hamlet of Le Broc. There is a C-47 crash site in the Boutteville area, but I have doubts that the marshes were under water in June '44 - apart from the drainage channels of course. There is other aerial footage showing the fleet of gliders apparently on dry ground, though again this footage was probably shot later in the summer when water levels were likely lower. More questions than answers as is usual in this game Regards, Pat