Subsequently, Hill recalled how the Royal Navy opened fire against the German defences along Sword beach at 0640. However, proceeding down a lane at about this time, his party came under air attack. The Pegasus Archive website states: 'At about the same time, Allied aircraft passed overhead and, mistaking Hill's party for the enemy, proceeded to attack them.' In other words, they executed a deliberate strike that resulted from misidentification.
Yet Hill did not record that the aircraft passed over before attacking. Word for word, he stated:
'We were walking down a lane when I suddenly heard a horrible staccato sound approaching from the seaward side of the hedge ... Having been in battle before, I knew exactly what that noise was ... I shouted to everyone to fling themselves down and then we were caught in the middle of a pattern of anti-personnel bombs dropped by a large group of aircraft which appeared to be our own Spitfires.'
In short, he and his men were quite literally attacked out of the blue, with no prior over-flight.
The precise location of the air attack is not recorded in Hill's account or in the Brigade Headquarters War Diary. However, Hill did recall meeting up with elements of 1 (Canadian) Parachute Battalion, and their War Diary clearly describes how they 'moved off along the pre-arranged route to the MERVILLE battery' and places the 'RAF bombardment at GONNEVILLE-SUR-MERVILLE'.
This village is now known as Gonneville-en-Auge. On D-Day, the fields to the west of Gonneville were a mass of bomb craters caused mainly by RAF munitions intended for the Merville Battery. Bomber Command dropped 1,066 1,000lb bombs and 2,125 500lb bombs in this area before H-Hour on D-Day. The village itself was severely damaged in the final raid on the night of 5/6 June.
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| The British airborne area between the Orne and Dives rivers; elements of 3rd Parachute Brigade used DZ V, while other airborne formations used DZ N. The Merville Battery is marked M. Gonneville lies between V and M. |
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| The dispersed drop at DZ V. |
Hill's recollections were at first accepted uncritically, but both the RAF and airborne historical communities became sceptical in due course. No large formations of Spitfires were assigned to ground-attack duties in the invasion area early on D-Day, and there were obvious difficulties involved in the idea of Spitfires dropping a multiplicity of anti-personnel bombs with extreme precision. It was then suggested that the aircraft might have been Typhoons, presumably because they were assigned to morning ground-attack missions.
Yet this theory is open to the same basic objections. Apart from the fact that Typhoons, like Spitfires, were not equipped with anti-personnel bombs, they did not operate in large formations on D-Day; typically, they executed their missions at or below squadron strength. Moreover, scrutiny of RAF unit diaries from 6 June 1944 reveals that relatively few Typhoon squadrons participated in the opening phase of the assault, and those that saw action were assigned to pre-planned fixed targets along or behind the landing beaches. None of these targets lay in the British airborne assault area between the Orne and Dives rivers. Furthermore, the recorded mission take-off times all confirm that the early Typhoon strikes took place later than the attack on 3rd Parachute Brigade's HQ element.
Beyond this, Hill's account describes aircraft apparently assigned to armed reconnaissance (seeking targets of opportunity) rather than to a planned strike. Yet no Typhoons mounted armed reconnaissance missions until the afternoon of D-Day.
There are further problems with Hill's version of events. Given the prevalence of low cloud across Normandy on the morning of 6 June, a deliberate strike by fighter-bombers on his unit could only have been mounted from low level. Virtually all mission reports of air strikes executed against visually acquired targets on the morning of D-Day describe how aircraft had to descend to low altitude to get under the cloud. Yet Hill recalled aircraft approaching from the seaward (north) side of a lane-side hedge. Assuming a low-level attack, the hedge should have concealed his men from aircraft making a single pass. As we have noted, there is nothing in his account to suggest that the aircraft held over the area or made multiple passes to identify their target.
It is also improbable that Spitfires or Typhoons would have used their heavier munitions - bombs or rockets - against troops in the open. These weapons were largely reserved for defensive positions, fixed installations, headquarters or armoured vehicles. To target personnel seen moving along a country lane, Allied fighter-bombers would normally have conducted a strafe attack with cannons or machine guns. Equally, with heavier or lighter weapons, they would have attacked along the road rather than executing the perpendicular approach Hill described. With a perpendicular approach, pilots releasing bombs even fractionally early or late were certain to miss the lane.
For all these reasons, it appears extremely unlikely that the 3rd Parachute Brigade HQ element fell victim to a surprise attack by fighter-bombers or was targeted by a deliberate strike. Anti-personnel bombs gain their effect not from precise direction against pinpoint targets but from being spread across a target area by large aircraft with the capacity to carry a substantial number of bombs.
Given the obvious objections to the identification of the attacking aircraft as RAF fighter-bombers, are there any other historical sources that might shed any light on their origin?
Surprisingly, there are two relevant records that can be found in a fairly obvious place - the 6th Airborne Division War Diaries. One such diary, 9 PARA's, describes how what remained of the battalion set off south towards the Le Plein high ground after the Merville Battery had been dealt with. 'Shortly after the start [therefore slightly south of the battery] a formation of Allied aircraft came over, and presumably mistaking them for enemy troops, released two sticks of heavy bombs. These sticks fell on either side of the column and parallel to their line of advance. By extreme good fortune no casualties ensued.'
Clearly, there are certain differences between the 9 PARA account and Brigadier Hill's. 9 PARA made no mention of Spitfires or low-level bombing. Yet the similarities are pronounced, too. The timing is broadly right, and the location might only have been slightly west of Hill's position, and about the same distance from the coast. The aircraft also approached from the direction of the coast (bombing parallel to the column, which was marching south). Most of all, 9 PARA described a bomb pattern that would normally be associated with large aircraft rather than fighter-bombers. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that 9 PARA were bombed by the same formation that attacked Hill and his staff, or at least by similar aircraft.
The second source is a statement included as Appendix F to 9 PARA's War Diary, which was prepared by Captain TE Robinson.
'On crossing the French coast our aircraft was engaged by enemy AA defences and the pilot had to take evasive action. We were eventually dropped at 183776 Sheet No 40/16 NW ... I contacted four men of my stick and also Brigadier Hill with about 20 Brigade Staff ... We linked up with Lieuts. Peters and Catlin and a number of "A" Coy and Mortar Pl. The approximate strength of our party was 35 ... A Frenchman volunteered to guide our party under the Command of the Brigadier to attack a field gun sited near GANNEVILLE-SUR-MERVILLE [sic]. At point 165762 we were bombed by what were alleged to be American aircraft and although I went the whole length of the column I found only 6 men and myself alive.'
Quite apart from the importance of Captain Robinson's description of American aircraft, his map reference provides a basis for tracing imagery of the air strike location, which plots out slightly south-east of Gonneville. There are very few lanes into Gonneville from the east; nevertheless, on the assumption that the map reference might only have been approximate, all lanes and tracks running through the relevant longitude were checked.
There proved to be just one lane and one track in the area that had been cut by bombing from north to south by 6 June 1944, and it soon transpired that the track had already been bombed by 28 May, presumably during another attack on the Merville Battery.
Hence, only one photographed incident matched both the map reference and Hill's general description of the attack. In this case, the imagery showed two sticks of bombs making perpendicular cuts across a lane with hedges on either side, as well as clusters of smaller impacts in the fields north and south of the lane. The sticks had been released by bombers that approached from the coast (the north), and the first munitions had fallen on the lane, but the majority had landed in the field beyond, which was ironically covered with German anti-glider posts - known as Rommel's asparagus. The lines of craters suggested large bombers with substantial bomb loads.
Yet examined in detail, certain pronounced peculiarities emerged - features that distinguished the cratering from the Bomber Command bombing to the west of Gonneville. While two sticks of bombs had hit the lane, there were six sticks in total. They were of a similar length, slightly under 300 meters, which was shorter than the Bomber Command sticks, and they consisted of ten to twelve visible craters. The craters were smaller than the largest craters caused by the RAF (presumably by 1,000lb munitions). In short, the craters suggested aircraft carrying about a dozen 500lb bombs. The sticks had been dropped on a north-to-south orientation, whereas the RAF Bombers had bombed west to east, parallel with the coast.
Of the clusters of smaller bombs, there is less to say. They reveal nothing about the approach of the aircraft. At best, we may surmise that these munitions appear to have caused little direct damage to the lane.
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| A period map of the airborne operations area; the red lines intersect at 165762. |
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| This was the location of the air attack; to the west can be seen the craters largely caused by Bomber Command's raids on the Merville Battery. The different orientation of the bomb sticks is particularly clear in this photo. |
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| The location of the air attack on 3rd Parachute Brigade's HQ element, photographed on 28 May 1944; the lane, marked in red, was lined by small trees on both sides. |
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| Google Earth provides this oblique view of the north-south approach to the lane; the one surviving section of hedge conceals the lane in the area where the air attack occurred. In 1944, higher hedges continued left. |
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| The attack location, photographed on D-Day. |
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| The six similar sticks of bombs, two of which cut the lane into Gonneville-sur-Merville. |
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| Another photo of the same location taken on 15 June, showing the bomb sticks first impacting on the lane and then falling south across the adjacent field. To the right are the smaller bomb clusters. |
The only large air formations bombing targets over Normandy between 0630 and 0700 on D-Day that included aircraft equipped with 500lb bombs and smaller anti-personnel bombs were the heavy bombers of the USAAF's VIII Air Force. For example, aircraft of the 100th Bombardment Group of the Third Bombardment Division carried twelve 500lb bombs on the morning of 6 June 1944. The official US narrative also records the carriage of 100lb and 250lb bombs.
The VIII Air Force considered bombing from west to east, like Bomber Command, but eventually opted to approach Normandy north to south - from the sea. This decision reflected the expectation of poor weather: it was thought that the contrast between the sea and the French coast would be clearly displayed on the H2X blind navigation system. There were also concerns that the American bombers, operating in daylight, would be targeted by German flak if they flew parallel to a heavily defended coastline. Quite apart from the losses that might have been incurred, evasive manoeuvres could well have driven aircraft off course, as they did in Operation Totalize in August.
On D-Day, the USAAF crews were unable to bomb visually because of the prevailing cloud cover and were ordered to delay weapon release to ensure that they did not hit Allied landing forces approaching the beaches. They bombed from altitudes of between 9,000ft and 13,000ft, which was far below the level normally associated with strategic bombing missions. Nevertheless, the relatively featureless Normandy coast did not show up well on H2X, and cloud prevented most bomb-aimers from seeing their targets. The majority of aircraft bombed on Pathfinder flares released two to three kilometres inland.
In this context, US documents show that Franceville beach, immediately to the east of the Orne estuary, was one of the VIII Air Force target areas. Originally, the VIII Air Force plan was to strike specific German positions - in this case two strongpoints. A number of accounts suggest that any hope of such precision was abandoned due to the prevailing weather conditions over Normandy on D-Day. In such circumstances, it would certainly have made far more sense to confine the bombing to the landing beaches west of the Orne, where there was also a clear logic in the order to delay bomb release. Mission success against the Franceville beach targets was never likely in poor weather, measures to protect the amphibious landing forces were less necessary, as no landings were to take place there, and overshooting aircraft ran the risk of releasing their bombs into the British airborne assault area, Gonneville included.
At the same time, given the weather, the possibility that some of the VIII Air Force bombers bound for Sword beach strayed off course and bombed wide by a distance of a few kilometres - to the east of the Orne - cannot be discounted. The difficulties of air navigation along this stretch of coast, approaching over water and without visibility of the ground, had already been underlined by the ill-fated British parachute drop at DZ V. Moreover, while official US records clearly state that Franceville beach was originally a target, an VIII Air Force list of targets actually bombed, which is held at the Air Historical Branch (RAF), makes no mention of it. According to this source, the most easterly target area attacked on D-Day was Ouistreham, west of the Orne. It may be that Franceville was such a small area that it was included on the list under the Ouistreham heading, but its location on the opposite side of the river estuary must surely cast doubt on such a hypothesis.
The Pathfinder system may also have been a factor. Eye-witness accounts from early on D-Day morning record fire and smoke from Gonneville resulting from the final Bomber Command raid on the Merville Battery, which might have have had the appearance of Pathfinder flares from the air. If identified as such by a Pathfinder aircraft (which was not an unknown problem in the Second World War), the target area might even have been marked in error.
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| The original VIII Air Force targets east of the Orne, marked A and B, relative to the location of the attack on 3rd Parachute Brigade at the intersection of the red lines. |
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| One of the surviving Franceville beach casemates, designed to shoot across the Orne estuary. |
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| A typical B-17 drop; twelve 500lb bombs. |
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| More long bombing near Varaville, illustrating the risk of bombing east of the Orne estuary. |
If VIII Air Force aircraft did bomb Hill and his men, he might never have seen them, although he would certainly have heard them. And if he did indeed see Spitfires, they might have been conducting entirely separate tasking. Numerous eye-witness accounts of Allied air activity on D-Day note that the airspace was extremely congested. As 439 Squadron's diarist described it, 'aircraft of all descriptions were present in every corner of the sky.'
On the rare occasions when ground troops are mistakenly engaged by their own aircraft, they understandably tend to think that they are being deliberately targeted due to misidentification. Yet in this particular instance, the evidence suggests that Hill and his HQ staff were not attacked on purpose or misidentified. On balance, it seems more likely that they were unfortunately blanketed by VIII Air Force bombs released through cloud and intended for Franceville beach or the Ouistreham-Sword beach area, and it is impossible to reconcile the evidence Hill left behind with the concept of a deliberate attack by RAF Typhoons or Spitfires.
The retention of the Franceville beach targets in the circumstances described here would have been extraordinarily risky. If they were retained (and we may never know for certain), it could only be because the different Allied components were not talking to one another; they were planning in isolation. Possible contributory factors include:
1. The VIII Air Force was a strategic bombing force and was not accustomed to working with ground forces.
2. There was a pronounced separation between the British airborne forces and other elements of the Allied invasion force.
3. Exceptionally high Operational Security (OPSEC) surrounded the British airborne operation, and senior British officers, including Browning, the British Airborne Corps commander, had little faith in American OPSEC standards.
4. The Franceville beach targets were chosen by regular Army and/or Royal Navy planners, who had little knowledge of the airborne operations east of the Orne. Their priority was to prevent the Germans from shelling Sword beach on D-Day.
Finally, this blog should not be seen as an attempt to shift blame for a very regrettable occurrence from the RAF to the USAAF. Rather, we must accept that Eisenhower and his commanders took the decision to launch Overlord on 6 June 1944 knowing that the weather was unfavourable and that there would be a high price to pay, particularly where the air plan was concerned. The Allies incurred numerous casualties as a direct or indirect result of the prevailing weather conditions but nevertheless achieved their ultimate goal by successfully opening a second front in northwest Europe.
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| The proximity of the VIII Air Forces' 3rd Bombardment Division target area to the British airborne landing area is clearly illustrated here. |
