Tiger I or II lost due aerial bombardment july 18 1944?

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Sheldrake
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Re: Tiger I or II lost due aerial bombardment july 18 1944?

#16

Post by Sheldrake » 07 Mar 2015, 13:19

Michael Kenny wrote: There is no evidence at all for the claim the TII was hit by 'friendly fire' other than the account of 1 crew member who was inside the closed down TII when it was hit. He could not possibly know who or what hit him.
There is a second source for this.

On a post war British Army Staff College annual Bottlefield tour to Normandy, von Rosen and von Luck visited the places where their fought. These two veterans who made the connection that at some point von Luck had directed his commandeered flak guns onto von Rosen's tanks.

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Re: Tiger I or II lost due aerial bombardment july 18 1944?

#17

Post by Michael Kenny » 07 Mar 2015, 13:47

Sheldrake wrote:
There is a second source for this.

On a post war British Army Staff College annual Bottlefield tour to Normandy, von Rosen and von Luck visited the places where their fought. These two veterans who made the connection that at some point von Luck had directed his commandeered flak guns onto von Rosen's tanks.
von Rosen was looking for an excuse to explain why he turned his tanks around and left the battlefield. Imagine if a commander in 11th AD radioed back that two of his tanks were hit and thus he was calling off all offensive action and going to the rear!

The Luck/Rosen excuse is applied to 2 Tiger I that were hit north of Cagny somewhere around La Prieure. That is 1.5 km from where the '88's are claimed to have been
The TII that is claimed was also hit by 'friendly fire' was the one Gorman rammed north-east of Cagny

cAGNY 1947 MAP WFG.jpg
Last edited by Michael Kenny on 07 Mar 2015, 14:29, edited 1 time in total.


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Re: Tiger I or II lost due aerial bombardment july 18 1944?

#18

Post by Michael Kenny » 07 Mar 2015, 14:28

This is from the Battle Zone Normandy book 'Battle For Caen (pg 179) and shows the area on July 18th.
Note the TII attack has not yet reached the cornfield although the tracks have got as far as the treeline to the right.
wedfggg0004 sml.jpg
This is an enlargement of the area of interest. The Tiger should be in view somewhere.
wedfggg0004rt.jpg

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Re: Tiger I or II lost due aerial bombardment july 18 1944?

#19

Post by Sheldrake » 07 Mar 2015, 16:04

Michael Kenny wrote:
The Luck/Rosen excuse is applied to 2 Tiger I that were hit north of Cagny somewhere around La Prieure. That is 1.5 km from where the '88's are claimed to have been
You may be correct. I have never heard this argument advanced from anyone who met von Luck or von Rosen. Admittedly von Rosen was a senior Bundeswehr general.

However, an AT round from 88mm Flak 36 should penetrate 91mm @ 1.5km which over matches the 80mm armour on the side of a Tiger II (if Wikipedia figures are correct.) von Luck's commandeered battery firing 60-80 rounds per minute in vob Rosen's general direction might have been enough conclude that he was under fire from heavy anti tank guns from a flank.

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Re: Tiger I or II lost due aerial bombardment july 18 1944?

#20

Post by Michael Kenny » 07 Mar 2015, 20:04

Sheldrake wrote:
However, an AT round from 88mm Flak 36 should penetrate 91mm @ 1.5km which over matches the 80mm armour on the side of a Tiger II (if Wikipedia figures are correct.) von Luck's commandeered battery firing 60-80 rounds per minute in vob Rosen's general direction might have been enough conclude that he was under fire from heavy anti tank guns from a flank.
I tend to look for more obvious causes. Like the hundreds of Allied tanks to the left!
The Flak battery is still unknown and unidentified. There is just the word of Luck for their existence.

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Re: Tiger I or II lost due aerial bombardment july 18 1944?

#21

Post by Sheldrake » 08 Mar 2015, 00:59

Michael Kenny wrote:
Sheldrake wrote:
However, an AT round from 88mm Flak 36 should penetrate 91mm @ 1.5km which over matches the 80mm armour on the side of a Tiger II (if Wikipedia figures are correct.) von Luck's commandeered battery firing 60-80 rounds per minute in vob Rosen's general direction might have been enough conclude that he was under fire from heavy anti tank guns from a flank.
I tend to look for more obvious causes. Like the hundreds of Allied tanks to the left!
The Flak battery is still unknown and unidentified. There is just the word of Luck for their existence.
You are in the von Luck biggest walter mitty of all time camp? I knew Ian Daglish whose death was a sad loss. He was the man with the cponspiricy theory.

Someone brassed up the Fife and Forfars, whether it was 75mm guns form Cagny or 88s doesn't mater, the overs went somewhere.
One of the military Murphys lawas may be in play:-

32. The only thing more accurate than incoming enemy fire is incoming friendly fire.

Mr Cock up is an un appreciated factor in military history..

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Re: Tiger I or II lost due aerial bombardment july 18 1944?

#22

Post by Michael Kenny » 08 Mar 2015, 07:40

Someone 'brassed up' von Rosen's Tigers as they started to attack.

The Story Of The Twenty-Third Hussars 1946

page 74

We arrived at the first railway line, between Demouville and La Carrieres, without having to deal with more than snipers in the corn. There we came to a halt because the straggling mass of vehicles in front of us had stopped. We could see some of the leading tanks on fire and sad little parties began to come back on foot. They were the surviving members of the leading crews, and obviously there had been some trouble. They all looked smoke grimed, as does anyone who has just jumped out of a burning tank, while, beside the more active members, staggered the black-skinned figures of badly burned men. Some of the parties carried stretchers, on which still figures lay. We gave these groups a passing glance and watched our flanks intently.
The sharp crack of an eighty-eight sounded as a Tiger opened up upon us from the east. It was supported by more than one Panther and, in the battle which followed, Second Troop of ‘C’ Squadron destroyed two enemy tanks and a Nebelwerfer. Captain Hagger destroyed a Tiger, though ‘A’ Squadron lost two tanks before the opposition was silenced.


The next may be just a retelling of the above rather than a second source.

1947 BAOR Battlefield Tour Papers

23rd Hussars, which had been ordered to screen CAGNYand FOUR from positions to the West astride the railway, also reported fire from two Panthers and some anti-tank guns, and was later engaged from North of CAGNY by two Tigers and anti-tank guns, but succeeded in knocking out one Tiger and one gun.


It might all be misidentification but it is at least some proof.


I I would hardly call Daglish a 'conspiracy theorist' and my opinion on this matter was formed long before the Daglish 2005 book where he first went into print about it. Daglish also names two others who came to doubt Luck's account, Dunphie and Sweet.

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Re: Tiger I or II lost due aerial bombardment july 18 1944?

#23

Post by Sheldrake » 08 Mar 2015, 12:04

There are big questions about von Luck's account, prompted by the aerial photos which Ian interpreted. "Conspiracy theory is too strong a word, which on reflection I should not have used.

It is hard to be definitive about what happens on any battlefield.

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Re: Tiger I or II lost due aerial bombardment july 18 1944?

#24

Post by RichTO90 » 08 Mar 2015, 15:13

Sheldrake wrote:There are big questions about von Luck's account, prompted by the aerial photos which Ian interpreted. "Conspiracy theory is too strong a word, which on reflection I should not have used.

It is hard to be definitive about what happens on any battlefield.
I've spent a lot of time trying to de-conflict what unit Luck might have encountered and in connection with Daglish's imagery analysis I think it pretty conclusive that Luck's account simply doesn't fit. However, I also spent enough time in the research for the Breakpoints study with combat veterans to realize that "war stories" like Luck's develop easily and aren't necessarily the result of dishonesty. For example, a couple of our Rapido River survivors described some events for that action that another survivor, from a different perspective, quickly realized had not occurred on the Rapido at all, but at Monte Camino a month earlier. We ran into similar conflations with veterans of the 106th ID and 7th AD in the Ardennes, the 28th ID in the Huertgen, and so on.

Memory isn't a video that we replay in our brain. Instead, we over time we conflate different memories, graft other accounts (for books, movies, and television) onto our "memory", and otherwise reedit events so that they become our new reality. Insofar as I know, Luck's account was first related by him at least 25 years after the event. It seems likely he could easily have melded memories of different days occurrences into one whole.

Bottom line is that the best evidence is that Luck's account is faulty, but there is actually little reason to believe he lied. As for Rosen, he had no reason to believe that Luck lied either, which allowed him to "fit" Luck's account into a logical reason for the defeat of his Tiger's. Again, no reason to believe it was deliberate conspiracy on their part, but was rather the natural consequence of two old soldiers telling "war stories" to a receptive and uncritical audience.

Cheers!

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Re: Tiger I or II lost due aerial bombardment july 18 1944?

#25

Post by Sheldrake » 08 Mar 2015, 21:56

Rich,

That is a nice way to put the problem I took an Anzio veteran along to a study day. He had served as a private in WW2 and a WO2 in Korea. He was adamant that he had seen the Polish flag flying over Monte Cassino, despite being captured at Anzio in February.

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Re: Tiger I or II lost due aerial bombardment july 18 1944?

#26

Post by JohnSten » 09 Mar 2015, 13:16

Michael Kenny, thank you for the photos and maps. They are just amazing. My interest is primarely Bomber Command, as my father droped the first markerbombs on this target (Manneville).

I clearly sees Your point about the tracks into the bombcrater. However the crater seems to be there before the Panzers comes along. So may be it is not the bombes that knocked it out.

The RAF Heavies had two aiming Points in this part of the Battle Field. Manneville and Sannerville. The aimingpoint for the Manneville raid was the Sharp angle in the treeline North East of the Manoir just right of the ringed number 2 in one of you airviews. The bombing startet at 0600 in the morning and was over some 15 minutes later. When did the Panzers attack?

I am not able to post a copy of the Picture I am talking about from Guillerville/Manoir, and it is not of very good quality as it is just a photocopy from the report. But if you send me Your privat mail address to the private Message Board, I will send you the copy.

It is hard to find the Tiger on the enlargement, but I think I can see one possible canditate, just North of the tracks leading in from West. It is impossible to se any of the other Panzers either.

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Re: Tiger I or II lost due aerial bombardment july 18 1944?

#27

Post by ChristopherPerrien » 09 Mar 2015, 17:17

While not connected with this incident and the destroyed Tiger II, there was a nice photo of a Tiger II ,""destroyed" but IMO -knocked out"" in Budapest, IIRC, by a 45mm AT gun. Side hit. It was on that good Russian tank wreck site , which I don't know if it is still around. But that picture puts paid on any real claims of the Tiger II's invincibility.

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Re: Tiger I or II lost due aerial bombardment july 18 1944?

#28

Post by maxdenormandie » 27 May 2015, 20:05

The Tiger II it's a real enigma for me.

Near Sannerville ? near Banneville ? or near Emieville ?

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Re: Tiger I or II lost due aerial bombardment july 18 1944?

#29

Post by Michael Kenny » 27 May 2015, 20:48

wedfggg00b04rt.jpg
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mannervillelitebb.jpg

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Re: Tiger I or II lost due aerial bombardment july 18 1944?

#30

Post by maxdenormandie » 28 May 2015, 06:45

Hi :)

incredible!

but Tiger II damage by bombardement or fight ? or not luck ?

Thank's!

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