Pathé News YouTube

[Ericr4b]

Some very impressive flying in this video. a channel well worth checking out.

 

[Bulletpoint]

I always feel mixed about the triumphalism and glorification of WW2 air war. Clearly these pilots were skilled and brave, but there were often innocent people on the receiving end.

Any idea of what the targets were in this bomb run?

 

[Ericr4b]

reading some of the comments under the film led me to this page (see attached) with testimony from a son of one of the French aircrew involved in this raid.

 

[Ericr4b]

And here...https://www.france-libre.net/chevilly-larue/ is an account of the raid (in French). Scrolling to the bottom of this account there is a small footnote, which says “unfortunately one bomb landed on a neighbouring house where a family were celebrating a child’s baptism, 16 dead.”. Two aircraft didn’t make it back, 4 crew died in one, but survived from the second; two became POW and two made it back to U.K.

Also, according to the son of one of the machine gunners aboard, he was told to hold fire against a spotted flak gun so as to avoid nearby civilian casualties; this is the flak gun which downed a plane.

 

[Rico]

I always feel mixed about the triumphalism and glorification of WW2 air war. Clearly these pilots were skilled and brave, but there were often innocent people on the receiving end.

Any idea of what the targets were in this bomb run?

More French civilians died under Allied bombs prepping for D-Day and after... than British civilians during the Blitz and rest of war from Luftwaffe attacks.

Sobering thought.