Mimoyecques
6 July 1944 — Mimoyecques
- Date
- 6 July 1944
- Target
- Mimoyecques, France
Narrative
At Mimoyecques in the Pas-de-Calais the Germans were building a battery of ‘V-3’ super-guns in deep tunnels, designed to fire a continuous stream of shells at London. On 6 July 1944 No. 617 Squadron attacked it with 12,000 lb ‘Tallboy’ earthquake bombs; one penetrated deep into the chalk and collapsed the tunnels and shafts, effectively ending the V-3 project. It was a classic use of Barnes Wallis’s deep-penetration bomb against a target invulnerable to ordinary attack.
Sortie details (which aircraft from which squadron, which crew flew, the outcome) will populate this page once the TNA AIR 27 squadron-diary importer arrives.
The fallen
79 airmen in this archive died on 6 July 1944 or the day that followed. For a raid of this kind these are overwhelmingly the night's losses, though a death-date match is not by itself proof an individual flew this operation.
- Air Corporal Albert G. Ball (33)
- Flying Officer Robert Huston Bannihr (25)
- Flying Officer William Morgan Barbour (21)
- Leading Aircraftman Henry Hedley Bell (20)
- Squadron Leader William Walter Blessing (31)
- Flying Officer John William Blyth (23)
- Warrant Officer Warwick Brothers (22)
- Air Sergeant David Keith Brown (32)
- Pilot Officer Reginald Archibald Percival Brown (28)
- Flight Sergeant Ewen Eric Cameron (27)
- Warrant Officer Class II Henry Ramsay Carruthers (21)
- Flight Sergeant Geoffrey Anthony Conway Coldridge (22)
- Corporal Clarence Nathan Cole (22)
- Pilot Officer Ronald Thomas Collins (26)
- Corporal Robert Edwin Colwell (23)
- Pilot Officer John Costello (21)
- Warrant Officer Geoffrey James Custance (21)
- Flight Sergeant John Phillip Sinclair Dalton (21)
- Flight Sergeant Rae Charles Dalton (27)
- Flying Officer Jack Chaldecott Dalziel (22)
- Flying Officer Gordon Dumville (21)
- Sergeant Myles Edward Duquette (30)
- Warrant Officer Robert Barnes Flegg (25)
- Corporal Louis Charles Foris (27)