Anniversaries

I know there are many of you (hah!) who are hoping for another controversial diatribe about current events, but I must disappoint you: I think I ruffled enough feathers in June’s blog, and will return to safer ground this month.
June 6th of this year was the Eightieth Anniversary of D-Day, and it got me to thinking about anniversaries and my Dad and the rest of the Coffey crew. Eighty-two years ago today, on July 19th in 1942 Dad was a Leading Aircraftman 2, the lowest form of life in the Air Force, and was walking the perimeter at the No. 2 Air Observer School in Edmonton, on guard duty. A year later on July 19th 1943 Sgt. Coffey was overseas at the Pilot’s Advanced Flying Unit in Shropshire, flying a solo training exercise in an Airspeed Oxford.
Finally we come to July 19th 1944, and we find Dad (a Flying Officer now) and crew in the thick of things, taking part in an intense battle known as Operation Crossbow.
In 1943 odd installations began appearing all over the Pas de Calais and Dieppe areas of Nazi-occupied France, built by the Germans in preparation of their V-1 flying bomb offensive. The installations were launch facilities, and they were relatively small, consisting of a concrete launch ramp that pointed toward London, and several storage bunkers, shaped like a snow ski lying on its side (the curve in the bunker prevented rockets from fighter-bombers being shot up their length...). They were usually hidden in orchards or fields, scattered about the French countryside and they could be quickly built and were easy to repair. Dozens and dozens of the sites were built and they began firing their flying bombs in early June, just after D-Day. The V1’s were true terror weapons, as they could not really be aimed – they flew off towards London and an internal mileage counter would cut off the fuel and cause them to plummet to earth when they were over the city. Hitler hoped that hundreds of V-1’s falling on the London area every day would force the Allies to come to terms with him and make peace.
What he got instead was an all-out offensive aimed to destroy his new wonder weapon. A defensive shield was placed across southern England, consisting of flak batteries and barrage balloons. Spitfires that had been specially modified to increase speed flew patrols in front and behind the screen, intercepting as many of the “buzz bombs” as they could.
The strategic and tactical air forces of both Britain and the U.S. did their part as well, with ground attack fighter-bombers like the Typhoon and Thunderbolt pummelling the sites from low level with bombs and rockets, medium bombers like the B-26 Marauder attacking them in small formations and Lancasters and B-17’s staging heavy attacks when needed. All these attacks were part of what was dubbed Operation Crossbow.
The Coffey crew took part in over a dozen attacks during Crossbow, and one of them was eighty years ago this very day, at about 4pm on July 19th, 1944. Dad’s logbook records the site they were attacking as “Rollez”, but the site was not actually in that tiny French village, but hidden in the woodland and pastures nearby. Other sources refer to the site as Verchocq, Bellevue or Herly, which are all very close by, within a kilometre.
The bombing method used that day was to lead the 50 Lancasters to the aiming point with an Oboe-equipped Mosquito. Oboe consisted of a pair of radar beams broadcast from two stations in England – the specially equiped Mosquito followed one beam and when it intersected the second, dropped its target indicators on the aiming point. The Lancasters following closely behind would wait a second or two and then drop their loads in unison. It worked very well, and on this day there was minimal cloud, so they got a visual on the site as well. There were too many launching sites in Normandy for the Germans to defend effectively, and Dad and his comrades faced no opposition, either from flak or fighters. The Rollez site had been hit the week before, but the damage had been repaired and it required this second visit. The USAAF sent a photo recon P-38 aircraft over the site in mid-August and confirmed the site was destroyed and no further attacks were required (see below).
Between the defensive screen in the south of England the Operation Crossbow offensive, Hitler’s “vengeance weapon” was prevented from making a significant impact on the course of the war, although it killed thousands of civilians and cost the lives of hundreds of bomber crews.
Today the remains of the V1 site at Rollez are still prominently visible among the trees and pasture of the French countryside, jutting out of the ground like disinterred bones in an ancient graveyard.