Hi Dean, As I understand the route, Rommel departed General Sepp Dietrich's 1 SS Panzer Corps HQ at St. Pierre-sur-Dives on route to his own HQ at La Roche Guyon via Livarot. Below is the only map I have seen of the route as published on page 43 in issue No. 8 of 'After The Battle' magazine: The caption reads: I have added two red arrows to indicate the detour south west around Livarot. How sure we can be that this map is correct I don't know, but I have never seen anyone contradict or improve on it. Note the heavy solid line ends above Vimoutiers at the gate lodge. Boissey is circled in blue. Regards, Pat
Hi All, Ellen has sent on some more stills from the first attack footage. I selected the sharpest three from opening, middle and closing scenes below: Anyone spot anything peculiar about this road strafing? The clue is in the question Regards, Pat
Pat, My guess is that these are train tracks ? The "road" seems too narrow, and there seems to be a hint of some darker parrallel lines within them. John
Hi Guys, Yes, that's what I see - a raised railway embankment As to what is being attacked, Ellen, can I ask you to check the footage to see if the object is moving just before your father opens fire? I don't think it is but the footage should confirm this. If it's not a small locomotive stopped, it must be some form of track maintenance wagon. John, I like your email suggestion this morning regarding the embankment at the north end of Grisy on the line to Sainte-Pierre-sur-Dives. The closest GE 'street view' to the embankment is looking east across the barley field to the road overpass here. I would expect though to see the overpass a bit higher to go over the embankment but that may be explained by track re-alignment. I don't have access to the 1947 IGN cover just now but that should confirm whether you have the right location. Regards, Pat
Hi Pat and Sean, NCAP also has a frame here: http://ncap.org.uk/frame/1-1-54-1-231?search=keywords/grisy&free-text=yes The road crossing the track seems to be an obvious problem to me. :/ John
Gentlemen, Most of us in the colony require sleep while it appears Whitebeam thrives with little. Re the first attack on the gun footage. The vehicle appeared stationary but I asked John Versteege to confirm. Here is John's assessment: "just looked at the film, frame by frame. - I don't think this is a train track. Just a field access road. The curve at the very end of the film is too sharp for any train to take at any speed except VERY slowly. - The vehicle is stopped. - at 2 seconds, a man appears standing on the back of the vehicle (or front?) and over the next frames, he jumps for his life and lands on the bottom right hand side, and crawls under while a barrage of machine gun fire sprays the vehicle. The tracks are, IMHO, tracks of a vehicle with deep wheel/tires, military kind 4 wheel drive, digging in the moist ground/mud." Ellen
Hi Ellen, I still think we are looking at a raised train track and that this may be some type of rail repair/maintenance vehicle. If this was a field access road, we generally don't see a change in terrain color on either side of a road as we do here or have something that looks like a border running along side of it. This is common in an embankment and the growth on it. A road cutting through a field is likely to leave the field the same color on both sides of the road. Just my opinion though... John
Thanks John, Makes sense to me. Expect John Versteege had his head only in the film footage and did not review earlier discussions. Ellen
Hi All, I agree John; we are, in my opinion, almost certainly looking at a raised railway embankment with a wide curve. OK, it may look too sharp, but is this curve not in the far distance as the aircraft pulls out of the attack? If such be the case, the 'sharp curve' may be several hundred yards long and hence in actuality be another wide curve. The vehicle is stopped before the attack commences?...good, excellent - for it to be in motion without steam rising from a funnel would have weakened the supposition that we are looking at railway track. I think it might be time to see where we are in relative terms. Below is a highlighted area which I propose is probably the extent of our Area of Interest (AoI) for this thread. The map itself is titled 'Special Strategic Map' and, importantly shows all the railway lines in Normandy which were in use during 1944: The airstrip from which Charlie Trainor flew from (Beny sur Mer ALG B.3) is marked thereon, together with three blue stars showing the way points for the 16:00 hour patrol referred to in 411's ORB Form 541 (Record of Events) for the 17th July. The three way points are (clockwise from top): Caen, Lisieux and Falaise. The third attack is marked '3' at Boissey. The attack we are currently looking at, be it rail or road, is the first of the three attacks in the footage. I propose to do a structured search of the rail lines in each of the four quadrants above and consequently I have zoomed the 'B' section below: If anyone wants to join in please let me know so that we avoid duplication of effort. Note the rail lines are black and the roads red. Double rail lines (marked with two ticks) can be ignored as the footage, again in my view, shows only a single track (single ticks on the above extract). To make the task somewhat more challenging, know that some of the single rail lines are now dis-used with sections completely removed :s Happy hunting Regards, Pat
Brilliant! Thank you so much, Pat. I'm sorry if I messed some folks up. While you guys are providing tremendous support to Ellen, I'm having to do the same for Major-General Rohmer. He has worked tirelessly for the better part of 70 + years to try and learn who might have been tasked to respond to his (Rohmer's) intelligence report. I now need to go back to Major-General Rohmer and see if I can learn more about his sighting. I also just bought a copy of his book Patton's Gap, so that I might have in his words what he was doing that day in his Mustang. Again, many thanks, and apologies to Jim, I believe. Sincerely, Dean Pat I, too, support your conclusion this is a raised railway embankment. The description of the man jumping off and crawling underneath the vehicle for protection, raises the possibility Charlie Traynor came upon a disabled tank. I mean, what other kind of vehicle would someone believe would protect them, if they hid underneath it? I don't think a rail maintenance vehicle would offer the same kind of protection as a locomotive, nor a tank. A soft-skinned vehicle would also be a problem, obviously. I think this was a stalled/disabled tank. Look at the gauge (width between the wheels/tracks) as well. If this is a German tank, what is the gauge of the French railway track, compared to a German tank? It is clear the tank is much wider than the "railway tracks". My first guess as to the location is 400 meters bearing 060 degrees East North East of the town of Coquainvilliers.
Hi Dean, I just wanted to let you know that I edited your comments by removing the several quotes you had included in your post. Sometimes the quotes get very distracting and hinder the flow of what we like to think of sometimes as a table discussion with us all in the same room. Respectfully, John
"While you guys are providing tremendous support to Ellen, I'm having to do the same for Major-General Rohmer. He has worked tirelessly for the better part of 70 + years to try and learn who might have been tasked to respond to his (Rohmer's) intelligence report. I now need to go back to Major-General Rohmer and see if I can learn more about his sighting." This much is easy, Dean. There is absolutely no chance that this strafing attack by my father was initiated by Rohmer. Dad told him so, many years ago. I welcome your input on this thread about my father's experiences in Normandy in 1944 but I might implore you once again to understand your answers re Rommel/Rohmer are not here. No apology’s necessary, we are all hear to learn of the history. / Jim P.S Sorry John, here I am using quotes in my post also. Sometimes I am not very fleet of mind, or finger for that matter, and it helps me to use quotes to allow an understanding to what I'm responding. I sure I can adapt to this new format however, given time, lol. / Jim
Hello all, I'm not suggesting this vehicle is neccessarily the type we're looking at here, but just wanted to point out that just because it's on a railway line, doesn't mean it's a train....... Cheers, Sean
Morning All, Dean, I cannot get a good GE 'street view' of your location at Coquainvilliers but this section of line between Lisieux and Sainte Julian sur Calone is certainly a single track line despite being marked as a double on my railway map :s I'll see if the 1947 IGN cover shows a match for this curve. BTW, if anyone wants to have a look at this post war IGN cover, instructions are located in the 'How to Search for IGN Cover' thread. Regards, Pat
Hi All, Too far to the east and the ground does not match, but I wanted to show you this embankment as an example of what we might be looking for. Check out the height of the bridge at the southern end of this one in 'street view' to see the massive overall size. I know it does not look as high from Charlie's footage, but I suspect 'our' embankment could well be this size when viewed from the ground. The search continues... Regards, Pat
Another thought... I also suspect that the slope on both sides of the track in the footage is the same, like the example above, even though there appears to be more earth on the 'outside' (left) of the curve. In my view this disparity is due simply to the fact that the aircraft is on the left of the track for most of the sequence. Regards, Pat
Hi All, Despite a weekend of riding the rails, I have so far failed to find our embankment. However I have now a structured search method in place whereby I download 1947 IGN cover for targeted sections of track between likely locations. Two such sections have now been cleared down with no good targets found: Cabourg south to Mezidon-Canon (7 frames) Caen east to Putot-en-Auge Junction (9 frames) The second line above intersects (or rather did intersect) the first just above Putot-en-Auge at this now well overgrown curve. Taking a break from the tracks, I found these two old postcards of Boissey. The first shows the eastern chimney of our angled house which brought home this location. Note the fountain at left is also still there today: The second postcard shows the church spire to be quite an imposing sight: The camera view is almost identical to this GE 'street view. Note the rooster weather vain on the top of the spire appears to be the same one in the postcard. I'll bet very few people have been able to view it as close as Charlie Trainor in all those intervening years Back to the tracks... Regards, Pat
Pat, Thank you for your persistance with the tracks. The postcards are most appreciated and just in time for a visit with our 90 year old mother who follows this story with great interest and gratitude. Ellen