New item 106

While I have been away visiting the family over Christmas, Laurent has been busy looking for more pieces in the forest. He has found a fragment of fuselage (item 106) about 45 cm (18 inches) long, possibly from the port wing given where it was found, with a shaped rivetted attachment which shown in close-up in the second picture.

It is painted black along one edge. What looks like a trace of red paint around one of the rivet holes is, in fact, rust. There is what seems to be a round-headed screw (a Dzus fastener?) in the centre of a small reinforcing plate on the shorter side of the piece which can be seen in the enlarged detail.

My best guess is that it may be part of the engine cowling as shown in the attached picture (perhaps from the area shaded in blue) given the rivet pattern along the upper edge in the top picture labelled No.106. Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

Photo-gallery:
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=BCF75E8AD40ADF0D!164&authkey=!AJrxfdmdr6MXSdw&ithint=folder%2cjpg

Index to parts found and annotated illustrations:
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=bcf75e8ad40adf0d!1426&authkey=!AAJOZyTYrN-x0CQ&ithint=folder%2cjpg

Update

A few more wartime events have come to light since my last post. I am told that as the bodies of the crew were being moved from Manoir du Val to the Freulleville churchyard in a cart commandeered from a nearby farm, some of the young people from the village joined the procession carrying flowers. It seems that the villagers had been ordered to remain indoors whilst the burials took place – apparently this was common practice to prevent a show of patriotism, and normally only the mayor and a priest would be allowed to be present. Sadly, those defying the order were reported to the German authorities – their names were listed, and they were threatened with arrest and imprisonment in Germany. The mayor then had long discussions with the German General and managed to prevent their being sent to the concentration camps. After the liberation, three women from the village had their hair shaved – not a glorious moment for the village!

We have not been able establish precisely when the bulk of the wreckage of the aircraft was removed from the site – only that it was probably in the early 1950s, but the piece of the landing gear lodged in a tree seems to have survived for a little longer.

Back in February I said that I had been working on a new higher resolution copy of a map of the wreckage area. This has now been updated to include Laurent’s latest finds. I attach below a low-resolution copy accompanied by an aerial view from 70 years ago, in 1947, which shows the area of the V1 site to the left, and which gives some idea of the area over which the wreckage was scattered. The location marked ‘V1’ in the upper part of the left-hand area was where Laurent found some pieces of a V1 missile casing and a broken launching piston from a failed test launch. I have now established that the V1 which landed in Manoir du Val fell by the crossroads in the top right corner of the aerial photograph attached to my post of 23 November, it would appear that this must have been launched from one of sites near les Grandes-Ventes, to the north of Ardouval, probably the one in the Forêt des Nappes known as la Briqueterie.

A higher resolution version of the sketch map is included in the photo-gallery. This shows the position, marked (12) near the eastern path where part of the undercarriage was seen, trapped in the upper branches of a tree.

Photo-gallery:
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=BCF75E8AD40ADF0D!164&authkey=!AJrxfdmdr6MXSdw&ithint=folder%2cjpg

Index to parts found and annotated illustrations:
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=bcf75e8ad40adf0d!1426&authkey=!AAJOZyTYrN-x0CQ&ithint=folder%2cjpg

Foret du Croc: wartime history

This thread has now been running for five years and has accumulated a little over 175,000 views. I had hoped to celebrate by saying that I had made contact with John Swarbrick’s granddaughters, Lisa and Rachel Harrison, as mentioned in my post of 25 September, but I have had no response from the Fallen Heroes of Normandy website – only a standard acknowledgement saying that due to the very high volume of correspondence they are presently receiving, it may be some time before they are able to respond to my email. The site is manned by volunteers, and it appears that there is a backlog of information waiting to be processed. My message was sent over eight weeks ago, but it seems that patience will be required before a reply can be expected.

However, there is another cause to celebrate. Out of the blue, last week, I received an e-mail from Hervé Morisset, a friend of Laurent, to say he had just written a book (published this month) about the history of the area, and that he had included a section on the German V1 site in the Forêt du Croc. This provides an interesting narrative of events at the time.

When he was a child, he had seen the aircraft’s landing gear hanging at the top of a tree at the edge of the forest. It was presumably part of the undercarriage of the detached port wing from which the wheel was taken and hidden in the corner of the forest (at location 12), so that the rubber from the tyre could be used to make soles for shoes. His mother, who lived in a house in the Chemin du Calvaire, was 20 years old in 1944. She witnessed the plane crashing, and she saw the crew’s bodies which had been moved to the courtyard of a farm near Laurent’s house. The German soldiers apparently took their flying jackets, boots, gloves, and watches! Sadly, she died in 2014, just before the memorial at Freulleville was unveiled, but she remembered the events throughout her life and she wanted the crew’s sacrifice not to be forgotten. The section in the book about the V1 site is Hervé’s tribute to the crew. Hervé has kindly given his permission for me to reproduce the following brief summary of the relevant parts of his narrative (translated from the French).

The ramp was bombed five times. At the time, the accuracy of the bombing left a lot to be desired, as much for the local population as for the squadron crews! The inhabitants decided to dig a protective shelter in the shape of a horse-shoe at Belhomme, to the north of the hamlet away from the forest near the rue du Manoir du Val, at the foot of a tree-lined slope. The V1 site was first attacked on 6 July 1944. On 20 July 1944 there was another bombardment when the crew of the leading Lancaster, hit by anti-aircraft fire, met a cruel fate because of the heroic action of the pilot. The aircraft crashed at the edge of the forest a few metres from the Chemin du Calvaire and the Rue des Pendus (now the Chemin du Croc).

For a long time, part of the aircraft’s cabin remained at the edge of the forest (location 1). After the war the children of the village used to play there. Nearby, a piece of a parachute was caught in the high branches of a beech tree above a place known as “la Boulangerie” (the bakery), but the parachute had not been used – it appeared to have been thrown out of the burning cabin and lodged, partly opened, in the tree. The bakery was built at the edge of the forest by the Germans for the supply of provisions to soldiers in the Forêt du Croc and elsewhere in the area, including to a General and his men quartered in Saint Vaast d’Equiqueville. It appears to have escaped serious damage when the aircraft came to earth.

In 1943, as elsewhere in the region, many of the houses, including the local school, were requisitioned by the occupying German troops. From 1944 the inhabitants of Manoir du Val were forbidden to enter the forest, where they had customarily collected wood for heating. They saw a large number of trucks passing by, towing trailers with camouflaged contents. Many men were employed, especially Russian prisoners, to make concrete – they did not know what it was be used for. Later, local men who owned a horse and a water container had to carry water into the forest, but the soldiers forbade them to go further than the ranger’s house, and they drove the trailer themselves to the light launch ramp which consumed a lot of water for cleaning and cooling.

It was a complete surprise and frightening when the inhabitants heard a strange noise (the sound of a badly regulated motorcycle engine it was said) and something rose in the sky and headed in the direction of Saint Germain d’Etables and then north towards Dieppe. The name “robot” was soon used to describe the missiles. Sometimes they malfunctioned: one fell at Manoir du Val and two others at Saint Aubin le Cauf and Archelles. [It is not clear whether the one which fell at Manoir du Val is the one from which Laurent found some pieces in the forest to the north of the launch ramp. Aerial photography suggested that this had probably resulted from a failed test launch in June 1944.]

Hervé Morisset’s book includes pictures taken from frame Nos.109 and 110 of the aerial survey of 1947. One shows the whole of the northern end of the Forêt du Croc and has an interesting view of a long gap in the trees of the forest which seems to provide a steep pathway up to a clearing near the top of the hill in which some buildings had been newly constructed in 1944. He speculates that this might have been in preparation for the construction of a second launch ramp which was never completed. There is also a view of the V1 launch ramp which became operational in 1944 running at an angle to the road, and still visible in 1947. These features are illustrated below together with an aerial view of Manoir du Val showing the locations referred to above.

By September 1944, the advancing Canadians had liberated the area.

Photo-gallery:
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=BCF75E8AD40ADF0D!164&authkey=!AJrxfdmdr6MXSdw&ithint=folder%2cjpg

Index to parts found and annotated illustrations:
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=bcf75e8ad40adf0d!1426&authkey=!AAJOZyTYrN-x0CQ&ithint=folder%2cjpg

Thanks, Peter. I will not be surprised if the items in the first two pictures remain unidentified. Although they have distinctive shapes, they do not stand out sufficiently to make them immediately recognisable. If anyone has any ideas I would be glad to hear.

While looking through the parts listing illustrations provided to me some time ago by Air Ministry, I came across a couple of items, one now tentatively confirmed with a part number, and the other not previously identified.

The curved oil pipe pictured in the first illustration below has a part number which is only partly distinguishable – according to Laurent, (?)6DP19??. This may be 4DP 1940. I am trying to confirm similar numbers with the RAF Museum archive – these do not appear in the Canadian parts listing, but would appear to be in AP2062A&C.

The other item, discovered at location 49, is more significant. It was found with what has only recently been identified as a spar shackle pin, and it is the bottom bolt for mounting the inboard engine sub-frame to the spar, as shown in the second illustration below.

I have updated the photo-gallery and index to parts found.

Photo-gallery:
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=BCF75E8AD40ADF0D!164&authkey=!AJrxfdmdr6MXSdw&ithint=folder%2cjpg

Index to parts found and annotated illustrations:
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=bcf75e8ad40adf0d!1426&authkey=!AAJOZyTYrN-x0CQ&ithint=folder%2cjpg

New finds

I have, at last, heard from Laurent with some more photographs of recent discoveries. An electrical storm just after he sent the last pictures caused havoc to his computer!

Item 102 is another piece found at the same location as the spar shackle and pin. No reference numbers are visible – it may be a bracket from the wing.

The fitting at the end of the electrical cable at the top of picture 103 appears similar to the fitting in the centre below it. The mangled piece at the bottom right seems to have had a rectangular base plate with holes for screws or bolts at the corners and with a central circular aperture. It could be the face of an electrical gauge such as an ammeter. Any thoughts on the distinctive shape of the electrical fittings would be appreciated.

Item 104 has been dealt with in an earlier post.

Item 105 is a ¾ inch hydraulic union with a central nut, identical to those found at locations 49 and 78. There seem to have been 12 of these along the front spar.

Photo-gallery:
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=BCF75E8AD40ADF0D!164&authkey=!AJrxfdmdr6MXSdw&ithint=folder%2cjpg

Index to parts found and annotated illustrations:
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=bcf75e8ad40adf0d!1426&authkey=!AAJOZyTYrN-x0CQ&ithint=folder%2cjpg

Great picture, Peter – much appreciated.

This would seem to provide additional evidence that the centre section and outer wing remained attached to each other until the wing hit the ground, and that the wing separated from the aircraft at a point nearer to the main fuselage.