Falmouth Bombing ~ Tuesday 30th May 1944

Dave.
I would say that anything is possible and more likely probable based upon an interview we conducted in Falmouth during 1969.
My Fathers step sister ran a hotel that was requisitioned by the Americans in preparation for the D Day landings.
The hotel also held Free French operatives who stayed in contact with her and she stayed with in France after the war.
Her Mother in law owned a large pre-war Daimler that the Americans kept requisitioning from her so that her son could deliver people and luggage to Thame Park.
Their family had come from the Thame area so their car would have been seen in the area both prior to the war.
Their family in Thame could never understand how they got sufficient petrol to visit Thame so often during the war time due to rationing.
The local people witnessed their car delivering people to Thame Park that they always denied and claimed was a case of mistaken identity.
They never told their family anything and it was only by us meeting a fisherman who had been assigned to ferry visitors from the hotel that we made the connection.
They both enjoyed caravanning and would stay with these ex guests without ever explaining how they came to know them in the first place during their European motoring holidays in the 1950’s.
We only found this out by interviewing the fisherman who had lost his job when the hotel had been destroyed during a bombing raid the week before D Day.
It was apparent that he did not care for the Americans and blamed the Free French for getting the hotel bombed.
The official line at the time was that a stick of bombs had missed their intended target and accidently destroyed the two hotels where the American OSS officers and Free French had been staying.
The fisherman pointed out that the Germans had pin pointed the petrol dump on one side of the hotel and the docks on the other side and then accidently hit these two hotels with direct hits.
His dislike for the Americans was based on them recovering loose paperwork and any personal luggage clothing as a priority before allowing the emergency services to recover the bodies from the rumble. There was a risk of unexploded ordinance, so they told him when he complained, they then accompanied him to his garden shed to ensure that no items had accidently been blown in through a locked door and a shed without any windows. Thereby ensuring a life time’s dislike of what he called the ‘septics’ and hatred of the French who came after the war and stole his fish.
Without his contribution we would never have known a thing.
Dave.

Dave, strange this because I am on another thread on here as well because my dad was on "special ops" after Dunkirk and made more than a few trips into occupied northern France from an airstrip near Shorncliffe and he hates the French as well.

Sounds to me like the 2 hotels and those in them were taken out deliberately to silence them for some reason, its just possible that the hotels had explosives set just waiting for an air raid so they could be set off without suspicion many would say this idea is stupid im sure, but let us not forget the secret services are a law unto themselves especially during wartime.

Ah Thame park was SOE STS 52 - Thame Park, Oxfordshire - security training for wireless operators so that adds weight to the deliberate sabotage theory to me or of course another possibility the agents in the hotels were wanted to appear to be dead I have heard stories of this happening lets fact it ANY BODY could have been placed in the hotels and blown up the possibility of identification given the secrecy of removal and the science of id at the time its doubtful if a certain recognition would have been made.

Dave, This family story was the one that had sparked my interest in the undocumented and when we took a retired USAF pilot on a tour of Cornwall he made a very similar comment to yours.
So we went back to check the fisherman's story and he introduced us to someone who claimed to have witnessed the raid and they had the impression from their viewing angle that it was a deliberate aim and not a random act.
They maintain that they saw the bombs fall but did not want to go the record for understandable reasons.
Most of the people we meet over the years agreed to share their recollections but did not want it to be credited to their name ~ so we agreed not to record anything electronically and write up their observations as un- collaborated information.
We did not need to prove anything and so let anyone treat it as pure speculation as the truth will eventually get out in the fullness of time.
On a flight from Tokyo to San Francisco I sat next to guy who claimed to be a retired military analyst and he told me that in every piece of elaborately constructed miss information there will be a thread of truth. From a thousand misleading conversations you will get enough threads to make a string. All you have to do is pluck the string and see what else resonates in sympathy with it. Then all you have to do is eliminate what it’s not and then you will be left with what it could be. He said that it’s easier to find out what it’s not than to find out what it is. Then all you will need is that first resonant vibration to make progress which is sometimes down to just pure simple coincidence.
Keep luck and chance in Reno was his parting comment.
I wrote that one down in the aircraft toilet so that I did not forget it.
Dave.

Dave the only way that the bombing could have been a deliberate aim was either that the Secret service had told the Germans what to aim for and where Non the less I would have thought (given the inacuraces of bomb aiming and bombs at that time I would be very doubtful that the hotels could have been hit accurately with any certainty. there is however another possibility that is that there were units in this country flying captured German aircraft and it is possible that the secret service used one of these to bomb the hotels (we run into the same inacuraces in bombs and bomb aiming however) and for this reason I discount the bombing theory no matter how many witnesses there are. Bear in mind that most bombing was done from a height which would make it impossible to say it was a deliberate aim, for these witnesses to say that the bomb run must have been at around 500 to 1000 foot which to my mind means stukas and I seriously doubt in 1944 in any German bomber would have got in that low let alone a low flying very slow stuka dive bomber.

No im afraid people are telling porkies here mate, or maybe that is what they were TOLD to say.

Cheers

Dave

Does any one have any more detailed information on the last Falmouth raid just prior to D Day ?

I've been sent a copy today of Vic Acton & Derek Carter's ' Operation Cornwall 1940 - 1944 ' and the raid is reported as being at Mid Night on the Tuesday and they dropped red & green flares and window strips to confuse radar ?

They reported the bomber ( Approximately 30 ) flew in across Carrick Roads, Castle Promontory , along the sea front to Swanpool Petrol Dump.

My aunts residential hotel was one of two destroyed killing 7 injuring 18 with one member of the US Service.

I said to myself, 'didn't we have info on this in the Falmouth Aviation Fuel Distribution Depot thread?' So I took a quick look and:

Swanvale Falmouth Fire on 30 May 1944

It happened at Swanvale in Falmouth soon after midnight on Tuesday 30th May 1944. A 1,250,000 gallon petrol tank received a direct hit from an incendiary bomb. The tank was fractured (thus allowing the fire triangle) and the fuel flowed into the nearby stream. This river of fire with flames shooting 70 feet into the air threatened the houses downstream. The fire burned for 22 hours and led to a heroic effort by the firefighters. Eventually a bulldozer was used to dam the stream and divert it away from the houses. The guy driving the bulldozer (seen in footage with a fag in his mouth!) Philip Lee Bishop of US Navy received a British Empire Medal and a Navy and Marine Corps Medal from US President. A second bulldozer was brought in and the driver was again awarded the same medals. Because the fuel was for D Day (Falmouth was an embarkation port for the US 29th Division for Omaha as well as a number of Naval vessels) the whole fire was hushed up until 4th September 1944 when Herbert Morrison, the Home Secretary, broke the silence by praising the firefighters.

You can check out the action here

Posted by CornwallPhil in Post #14

There is an account of the bomb damage to fuel storage tanks at Falmouth in 'The RAF Builds for War' but it does not date the attack but is probably the same incident. I will recount it here if you want.

Thanks Peter very interesting ~ did they ever name any of the people killed in the raid do you know ?

If I can't the post I will let you know ~ thanks for the help

Obviously, there is a casualty record somewhere probably in a Devon archive or TNA. Is that your main interest; following-up on your aunt's hotel?

This is from the BBC Peoples War .

"The holocaust at Swanvale was not all; twenty-five high explosive bombs, 23 firepots and twenty butterfly bombs were dropped on Falmouth itself and there was much machine gun and cannon fire. Extensive damage occurred at Melville Crescent where two bungalows were demolished and many others damaged. The Pentargon Hotel on the Sea Front was demolished and a number of members of the Womens Royal Naval Service, who were billeted there, were killed or injured.

The Boscawen, Carthian House and Albion Hotels and Belseto were also substantially damaged.

Other areas which were badly damaged included Melville Road and Bay View Road. Minor damage was caused at Grove Hill, Castle Beach, Harvey’s Yard, Marine Crescent, Stracey Road, Pendennis Road, Railway Cottages, Sailor’s Rest, Boscawen Road and the Pier.".

I assume one of these hotels is the one you speak of.