617 Squadron Documentary

[leccyflyer]

Just watching a documentary on 617 Squadron's missions after the Dams raids - starting by covering their role in diversionary deception missions on D-Day, dropping Window to dupe the Germans into believing that the main attack was to be in the Pas De Calais.

 

Now they have moved on to their role in attacking the V weapons sites in the Pas De Calais with Tall Boy bombs. Unfortunately some of the info is particularly duff. The presented visited the V3 site at Mimoeyeques and they made the claim that nobody had set foot in the tunnels since June 1944 when the site was destroyed by a Tall Boy bomb that clipped the edge of one of the concrete slabs of the V3 and buried the workers alive. They made out that the presenter and a French historian were the first people to see the weapon since then. Sorry, that's nonsense - the tunnels form a museum that has been open for decades, I visited it myself in the late 80's and went down the tunnels. The place where they showed an illuminated section of the V3 supposedly having the finishing touches being put to it at the time of the raid has been there on public display for decades -it even has mains powered electric lighting showing it! Yet the presenter and French historian bearing torches proclaimed that nobody had been down there since 6th July 1944.

 

Along the tunnels is a memorial stone, dedicated to President J.F. Kennedy's bother, who was killed in Project Aphrodite, a further attempt to destroy the site using war weary B-24s loaded with explosives - Kennedy was killed when one of these exploded over the North Sea.  After the damage inflicted by the RAF caused the weapon construction to be abandoned, the site was captured by ground forces and ultimately the Royal Engineers were instructed by Churchill to blow the site up, lest the weapon be used against London. This was done without consulting the French authorities.

[Nigel Dell]

I have no idea how they think that is good for a documentary Leccy, so easy to disprove. One of my pet hates! As you say it’s been open for decades.