Ju 390 NYC flight

[Troy Tempest]

Hi all! Can anyone provide any source material to back up the story about the FAGr 5 Ju 390 flight that was supposed to have taken place in Jan 44 from Mont-de-Marsan to within 12 miles off the NY coastline? I have two books that mention it and neither provide any source. There is another poster on another site whose opinion I respect and he claims the flight is mythical or probably mythical, and I was wondering if anyone can set the record straight for me one way or another please?

Troy

[Kurt_Steiner]

There is a thing called "Search function". Had you used it, you would have found 7 threads more or less related to this topic, like this one I would suggest you to read.

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 57&start=0

[Troy Tempest]

Thanks Kurt! I'm sorry, I'm fairly new here, and DO forget to use the search function. I am having myself transferred to the Eastern Front immediately!

Troy

[Cantankerous]

Hi all! Can anyone provide any source material to back up the story about the FAGr 5 Ju 390 flight that was supposed to have taken place in Jan 44 from Mont-de-Marsan to within 12 miles off the NY coastline? I have two books that mention it and neither provide any source. There is another poster on another site whose opinion I respect and he claims the flight is mythical or probably mythical, and I was wondering if anyone can set the record straight for me one way or another please?

Troy

According to a letter published in the November 1955 issue of the British magazine RAF Flying Review, of which aviation writer William Green was an editor, in June 1944, Allied Intelligence had learned from prisoner interrogations that the first and only completed Ju 390 prototype had been delivered in January 1944 to Fernaufklärungsgruppe 5, based at Mont-de-Marsan near Bordeaux in western France, and that it had completed a 32-hour reconnaissance flight to within 12 miles of NYC, taking aerial photographs of the coast of Long Island. This Allied intelligence report was rejected just after World War II by the British authorities, but the allegations about the Ju 390 in the British intelligence reports titled General Report on Aircraft Engines and Aircraft Equipment created an urban legend about the Ju 390 flying to within a few miles of Manhattan. Duffy (2004) notes that Green told historian Kenneth P. Werrell that the rumor of the Ju 390 flying to Long Island to test its capability to attack Manhattan lacked any credence. A 1969 news report in the Daily Telegraph titled "Lone Bomber Raid on New York Planned by Hitler" claimed that Hans Pancherz flew the Ju 390 on a test flight from Germany to Cape Town in early 1944, but this claim likewise was fictitious.

Duffy, James P., 2004. Target America: Hitler's Plan to Attack the United States. Santa Barbara, California: Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0-275-96684-4.

[RFVD11]

I remember in 68/69 I read a series of Luftwaffe planes in the Fort Bragg reference library that made that same claim. Do not remember the author or titles.