Typhoon Gun Camera Footage Found

Hi All,

Regular readers may recall a sequence of Typhoon gun camera footage which has been on our 'wanted' list for some time now. The 12 seconds of footage is very commonly used to illustrate the potent fire power of the fighter in its ground attack role in Normandy. Below is one of the many copies of the footage:

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There are at least two aircraft attacking a curved single track railway as it enters a small station and fiddle yard. I have several stills pinned to my notice board behind the desk for over two years now in an attempt to spot the location. Below is a still from the opening scene showing some of the ties which I had noted and used when searching many hundreds of miles of French railway track on GE during this time:

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As so often happens, I was looking for something completely different last night, researching for the '12th SS Panzer Division in Normandy' thread and had occasion to check some reconnaissance cover in the NCAP database for the village of Troarn, which is situated about eight miles east of Caen. While looking at frame 3087 from sortie 400/0240, which was flown on the 15th June, the railway station with the curved single track, arrowed white in the extract below, struck me as being familiar. The ties to the Typhoon footage quickly became obvious:

Image Credit: RCAHMS/www.ncap.org.uk
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I next had a look for post war IGN cover of the village, which is normally only available from 1947 and is rarely heavy in definition. However, there were sorties flown immediately after the war over some villages and towns, presumably for damage assessment purposes. These are normally very good to excellent definition. As luck would have it, Troarn has such cover in the IGN database. Below is a downsized version of three such combined frames:

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Amazingly, this high definition cover flown in 1946 shows the rocket impacts in the railway line two years after the attack seen in the gun camera footage:
Impact #1:

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Impact #2:

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Impacts #3 & #4:

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Impact #3 misses the track and the crater does appears to have been fully covered in by 1946. Looking at how built up the village has become today, its not surprising that finding the location has been so difficult:

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Hedgerow corners 'A' and 'B' have just about missed being built over so far, the railway station has been completely built over but the pond and the signal box have also survived - though the latter has had an extension added to its track side frontage:

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I think I'll go mad and have an extra glass of red with the take-away tonight

Regards,

Pat