Falmouth Bombing ~ Tuesday 30th May 1944

Have a look at this footage mate (if you aint already seen it)

Peter & Dave thanks for the information links ~ I've attached the only image along with a Falmouth Packet news paper article that some one sent in 1966 when they retired.

A local Fisherman that had worked at the hotel prior to the raid informed my Mother in 1960 that the town had been targeted due to the Free French operatives who stayed there prior to the bombing.

The owners had relatives living Thame Oxfordshire at the time and it was reported by some of the local people that they had been seen delivering people to Thame Park during the war which they had always denied.

During a hotel organized boat trip to the Isles of Scilly in July 1960 one of the guests who had been in Falmouth at the time had believed it was more than coincidental that the two hotels destroyed were the ones billeting the Free French and what they believed had been OSS staff on the build up to D Day.

The Pentargan Hotel was apparently the one on the right and the Boscawn was the one still standing.

I did a quick check when we went back in 1964 and could not locate any names to go with the deceased.
[IMG]/community/128927=13036-Pentargan Boscawn 1944.jpg[/img]

Would there be any Devon & Cornwall police records that list those killed in the bombing? I know that pretty good aircraft crash records and names were kept by them, but don't know how they are accessed.
Personally I would think that the hotel destruction would be an unfortunate result of the petrol installation attack, rather than a pinpoint attack on it which would have been very difficult at night.

Mawganmad: Understood and a little more on the back ground details and I would appreciate any ones opinion.
The officer in charge who briefed my Aunt on her return to Falmouth told her that the official record ( ? ) would show that the hotels were destroyed when bombs that had been intended for the dry dock area over shot their target and destroyed their hotels.
Note 1: If my Aunts husband and his Mother who owned the site had been compensated for their property loss then the official wording may have been important.
The fisherman ( ex employee ) that my Mother spoke to and I subsequently meet in the old cafe by the original Falmouth Town Railway Station ( Now Falmouth Dock ) Introduced me to one of his old colleagues that had been on night watch duty. He told us that the bombers had flown down castle beach drive ( Cliff Road ) towards the Swanpool area and not across the dock area and out to sea.
Note 2: He did not know how many aircraft were in the formation but said that he could see the bombers reflection at the end of the stream from the fires flares explosions dropped from the leading bombers.
Note 3: I read in later reports on the event that there were up to thirty bombers in the stream and that they had also dropped radar confusing foil ?
I walked around the old motorcycle racing circuit which is now called castle drive in 1960 and noticed what appeared to be storage tanks under the cliff between the dry dock area and Pendennis Castle.
These appeared as if they would line up with Cliff Road if they were in existence in 1944 and not a later addition.
If the bombers were flying towards what they called the Swanpool direction and there had been thirty in the bomber stream. Then I was told to consider the flight path width required to obtain the maximum blast effect and that it would indicate three abreast for a half mile wide and one mile long concentration.
Note 4: Thirty years later I was discussing this story with a fellow passenger on a flight from Tokyo to San Francisco who claimed to be a retired Military Analyst and he told me to try and locate a " Bomb Drop Spread Sheet " this apparently would indicate their flight direction when they released their " Sticks " and if I could find out the type of bomber involved. I would then have been able to match load capability verses the load dropped to indicate if it was either a dedicated mission or just a mission of opportunity.
Note 5: Apparently he had seen me at the old Tachikawa Airfield in Tokyo and was interested to know why I had been there.
The raid was recorded as being at mid night and to also see aircraft reflections it would indicate that it was a low level rather than high level attack.
If the bomber stream speeds were in the region of eighty to one hundred miles per hour with thirty aircraft and at low level then to hit a narrow target window of one mile by one half mile this could indicate a level of selective targeting.
Note 6: One on the elderly engineers that I had been working with in Paris during 1990 carried the Tri Colour lapel tag that de Gaulle had issued to people who had provided outstanding service to the republic ~ so when the opportunity presented itself for an explanation of the Free French connection and my interest in this story. His opinion was more towards a regrettable level of support to the Falmouth Fisherman story however his country men were still apparently struggling to come to terms with their occupation years and it would be very unlikely that I would be successful in obtaining any information that could lead to a negative impression.
Above is just a quick over view of what I’ve been able to find out in the last fifty years and there is lots more still to be found out.

Apart from the V1 and V2 attacks this must have been one of the last air raids of wwii on the UK.

Dave as I said before there is only one bomber in use at this time that I can think of would have the nessesary accuracy to hit a small hotel with a deliberate attack and that is the Stuka dive bomber. You already know my opinion on this mate from the other thread. Looking at the photo it seems obvious to me that the Pentagarne was the one "hit" with the Boscawn suffering just blast damage. I have seen this kind of damage when I did tours in Northern Ireland and that was usually from a bomb planted and set off in one building damaging adjacent buildings with the blast.

Cheers

Dave

Dave, most of the people who have looked at this grainy image since you posted me last have agreed with your interpretation.

One guy was puzzled by the blast damage to the hotel next door as it appeared to him that it was lot more vertical blast damage that he would have expected to see ?

Dave

Dave ~ I followed up on your dive bomber idea and this is what I’ve understood.
Load Wikipedia and search for ‘ Kampfgeschwader 6 ‘ as apparently this was the battle wing number 6 that carried out the attacks in and around Falmouth during May 1944.
They used Junkers 88 Dive Bombers and clicking on the links will lead to more pages which includes dive bombing accuracy plus they had been fitted with a ‘Stuvi’ dive bomb site which I’ve assumed is some type of early programmable bomb site?
On May 30th & May 31st Battle Group 6 had dropped mines off Falmouth and they had also bombed the docks as part of a 51-aircraft force. (If it’s the same raid then the number of aircraft has increased from the original 30)
The aircraft that you suggested the ‘Stuka’ or Junkers 87 was apparently being replaced by a number of different types towards the last years of the war. The Junkers 87 not being suited to the Falmouth style of Hit & Run raid.
I asked why and apparently the Junkers 87 would have to start its dive bombing run from about 15000ft (nearly three miles above Falmouth) and then it would have to pull out at 1500ft to release its bombs.
I guess that being so close to D Day it would have made them vulnerable to night fighters?
Dave.

Dave ~ thanks to your idea’s the investigation has moved on significantly in the last 48 hrs, thanks again.
Latest inputs relative to the subject of dive bombers and Stuvi bomb sites.
My Adolf Garland admirer in West Germany has provided the following as yet unsubstantiated opinion on a subject that is not his core interest ~ however I’ve posted it here so those that do know the facts can correct me.
1) For the Stuvi to function accurately in the Junkers 88 the input data had to be very precise and it could not be programmed in enough detail from just Arial Photographs.
2) To hit the hotels on the sea front (if they were one of their prime targets ~ as yet not proven) they would have needed a very accurate area profile maps and they could not have been programmed to that degree of accuracy, even when used with our national OS maps in association with their detailed Arial Photographs.
3) The German air force must have had the equivalent of our pre D-Day sand maps to stand any chance of hitting a small 250m radius target area flying at low altitude.
Apparently Garland had been insisting on using the modified FW 190 for dive bombing as he considered the Junker’s 87 only fit for just one way missions by 1944?
Portsmouth Matelot looked for evidence to support option 3 and found the following:
The German cadet training ship ‘Schleswig Holstein’ used by their secret service as a cover in obtaining these type of detailed area profile maps (for future strategic targets that were of interest to the Berchtesgaden Working Group) had been sent to Falmouth a number of times during the late 1930’s.
Matelot understood that they had produced detailed area profile maps on the Falmouth area for the BWG and that they were accurate to within a metre in any of the three axial directions.
If they had made more than one visit then it was most likely because the BWG had found areas of unacceptable inaccuracy between the individual profiling teams. I was lead to believe that a number of SS observers were also on board to ensure that the individual survey profiling teams did not pool their data and try to correct their own inaccuracies before the raw data reached the BWG.
The area profiling maps would have also included an accurate sea bed survey. For consideration of using their underwater surveillance system then being developed in an area near to Peenemunde. This technology was allegedly tried out later on in the cold war by our Russian colleagues for information gathering in Swedish harbour's.
These risks were mitigated during WWII by conducting daily searches in Plymouth Harbour when a diver was sent down looked for any explosive charge that could have been attached over night to ships hulls etc.
The practice of using surveillance divers continued to be used into the cold war era as a direct result of the German cadet training ship ‘Schleswig Holstein’ program. I believe that small pockets of this information gathering data were discovered during the European Liberation Process and were in due course forwarded to NATO Naval Intelligence etc.

Glad my input was some use mate, yes I had found the info about the ‘Schleswig Holstein’ and the photos I was going to mention it tonight. I do agree with Galland by 1944 the Stuka was outdated and prey to virtually any fighter in use by the allies so I seriously doubt it would have been them involved in the raid.

Found this on the net may help to add to this.

"On leaving school in 1940 I was employed by an electrical contractor and, after eighteen months, I transferred to the Post Office Engineering Department (now BT)for 45 years. I still remember two special occasions, which were indeed a privilege and a pleasure.

The first in 1942 was to provide telephone service for Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, at the Falmouth Hotel.

The second in 1944 was to install (under tight security at Tulimarr, Perranarworthal) secrecy (scrambler) telephone equipment for General Eisenhower who had been inspecting the embarkation hards at Turnaware, Point, Tolverne, Falmouth & Helford River.

I also helped to maintain secrecy equipment on board Lord Runciman's yacht at Helford, which was the flagship of the SOE (Special Operations Executive)and also at their two houses Redifarne and Pedn-Billy in Bar Road, Helford Passage.2.

So as well as OSS and free French there was a high profile SOE presence in the area.

Cheers

Dave