Omaha Beach, Normandy, June 10, 1944
This is the view that pilots of the 33rd PRS had of the invasion beaches in Normandy as they flew over on their way to targets in France. Landing craft, looking like random chips of wood, line the beachhead unloading troops and supplies. At the bottom of the photo, several boats can be seen leaving the beach front, trailing wakes of foam behind them.
Photo courtesy of Howard T. Keddie

Blooded and ready for more
Among the most active 33rd PRS pilots to fly in June 1944 were (left to right) Sonny Clevenger (7 sorties), "Pop" Roberts (9 sorties), Abram Weaver (7 sorties), Paul Miller (12 sorties), Herb Pitcher (9 sorties), and Bob Adams (8 sorties). Behind them sits an F-5 being readied for yet another flight.
Photo courtesy of Patricia Pitcher Upshaw

Bridge at Rouen
The Seine River was a natural obstacle to supplying the German 7th Army in Normandy. Knocking out bridges over the Seine was critical to interrupting the flow of men and supplies to the Wehrmacht. 33rd PRS photos helped determine if a bridge was out or needed another bomb strike. The ground photo above shows a destroyed bridge at Rouen.
Photo courtesy of Philippe Canonne

Tracking the flights
When the squadron Operations section set up shop at Chalgrove, Sergeant Bob Sheehan had Corporal Elwood Davis design and create a flight status board. The first section, "Operational Status" kept track of aircraft readiness and included each plane's serial number, crew chief's name, and its engineering, communications, and camera status. "Operational Missions" tracked actual flights including pilot name, aircraft number, and estimated and actual times of arrival and departure. "Mission Data" logged the total mission count for each plane as well as the target, sortie number, and altitude information for current flights being tracked. In the photo above, taken at the end of June, Corporal Dick Haynes annotates the board while Bob Sheehan tallies up some paperwork.
Photo courtesy of Patricia Pitcher Upshaw

June 1944 would see the greatest amphibious assault in history -- "D-Day" or as the troops referred to it, "The Big Show." Most of the aerial recon work had already been parceled out to the other squadrons of the 10th Photo Group, but the 33rd Photo Reconnaissance Squadron would find itself busy enough on and after June 6. On June 13, the 33rd PRS was transferred to 67th Tactical Reconnaissance Group of the IX Tactical Air Command (TAC). However, it operated as part of the 10th Photo Group for the rest of June.

The Situation

The 9th Air Force continued its campaign against railroad bridges over the Seine River and Luftwaffe airfields within 130 miles of the Normandy beaches. (So intense was the river campaign, that bomber crews began to joke with each other: "Seen any good bridges lately?") The 9th's activities reached a crescendo on the day of the invasion, June 6, during which it sent out 4,700 sorties of all types, including bombing and strafing runs against the beach defenses themselves.

Though the D-Day lodgment was made, bad weather and German resistance slowed down the Allied advance. The 9th Air Force continued to provide close tactical support to the troops as they began pushing inland. The British stalled in front of the defenses of Caen, while the Americans were quickly entangled in the famous hedgerows ("bocage") of Normandy.

To read the AAF's account of these actions in "The Story of the IX TAC", click here.

In June, the 33rd PRS was part of a greatly expanded aerial reconnaissance program. From June 1 through 30, the 9th Air Force sortied 3,020 recon flights, over a thousand more than the combined recon sorties flown for March, April, and May. In the first 21 days of June, Photo Lightnings took over 3,000,000 pictures of the Normandy coast and surrounding areas.

Squadron Activity in June

In June, the 33rd PRS launched 153 combat sorties: 45 were for bomb damage assessment, 23 for mapping, 49 for intelligence, and 36 as escort for other aircraft. Of the 117 non-escort sorties, 60 successfully photographed their targets. Of the 57 sorties that didn't get pictures, 36 failed because of weather, 10 due to aircraft failure, three due to pilot error, four due to Luftwaffe or flak defenses, and two were recalled (the reason for one unsuccessful mission wasn't recorded).

33rd PRS F-5s logged over 253.5 hours of combat flight time, the average flight time per sortie being about one hour and 39 minutes. The squadron's top aircraft for the month was F-5E 43-28309 with 21 combat sorties, accumulating almost 35 hours of combat flight time.

Nine 33rd pilots flew their first combat missions in June:

• Bob Adams
• Robert Baker
• John Barnby
• Archie Browne
• George Coffey
• Forest Eckenrode
• Bill Evans
• Lenny Gold
• Peaches Killingsworth

Bob Adams was the last of the original cadre of squadron officers to fly his first combat mission. John Barnby was the first of the newly assigned officers to fly a combat mission. The top pilot for the month was Paul Miller with 12 combat sorties.

On D-Day, the 33rd PRS was responsible for nine of the 59 F-5 photo reconnaissance sorties scheduled by the 9th Air Force. The targets for June 6 were the same as previous Operation Pointblank assignments in May: Luftwaffe airfields and bridges over the Seine River. Despite bad weather at the targets that spoiled five of the squadron's nine missions that day, 33rd pilots saw plenty while flying to and from their targets. John Moran reported several formations of B-26 Marauders "headed southwest over French coast at Cherbourg," part of over 1,000 medium bombers that IX Bomber Command dispatched that day. Later in the afternoon "Pop" Roberts witnessed P-47 Thunderbolts dive bombing coastal batteries at Benerville. They were being directed by an Army air combat control squadron onboard the USS Ancon (AGC-$), the flagship for the Allied assault forces at Omaha beach.

Of the nine 33rd PRS pilots who flew on D-Day, six of them would be killed in the course of the following year.

Once the troops were on the ground in Normandy, poor weather continued to play a major role in limiting the effectiveness of Allied air forces. Besides the nine missions of June 6, the 33rd PRS launched only eight other sorties the rest of the week: no flights on June 7 because of weather; five of seven targets for June 8 were overcast; no flights were sent on June 9; the only two flights dispatched on June 10 failed because of weather. It would continue to be a problem for most of the month. Of the 33rd's mission failures for June, 63% would be due to weather.

The official unit history, however, noted a positive counterpoint to the inclement skies: "The prevalence of bad weather in this theater is offset to some degree by the long period of daylight each day. Aerial photography being possible from seven o'clock (0700B) in the morning to nine o'clock (2100) in the evening." Extended daylight hours also made it mandatory that squadron sections work two shifts. The official history noted that because squadron planes were grounded so often by poor climate, it "enabled the mechanics to maintain an Eighty Percent total of planes available to fly."

The second week of June was much more successful with the 33rd putting up 53 combat sorties. From Sunday through Thursday, 32 of 42 missions were successful, including a low-level ruse to keep the Germans concentrating on the possibility of Allied landings in the Pas-de-Calais region.

To read about this mission near Pas-de-Calais, click here.

Saturday, June 17, cast a pall over the week's good work. A combination of cloudy targets and a resurgent Luftwaffe caused all seven missions to fail. Worst of all, the squadron suffered its first F-5 combat casualty when John Moran was killed in action. Moran was one of more than a dozen photo recon pilots that the 9th Air Force would lose in June.

To read a memorial tribute to John Moran in the History chapter, click here.

With the Luftwaffe showing signs of recovery, an increasing number of squadron combat sorties were sent out with a second F-5 accompanying it as "top cover" -- a lookout for the F-5 doing the photo work. In the third week, 22 of the 33rd's 63 combat sorties were escorted. The targets continued to be of the same variety, mostly photo intelligence on German airfield activity in Normandy and Brittany, bomb damage assessments of German ammo and fuel dumps, and mapping of areas north of the Seine River. June 20 was the squadron's busiest flight day of the month with 21 combat sorties going up, 10 of them as escorts.

Only two days were flyable in the last week. With one exception, squadron missions for June were high altitude, between 18,000 and 30,000 feet. Though the Luftwaffe was virtually swept from the skies in the early part of the month, 33rd pilots began reporting more enemy aircraft activity and flak in the last half -- more than a dozen instances, one of which resulted in the loss of John Moran.

During this month, the squadron experimented with a 36-inch focal length camera, the Universal F-52 used by the Royal Air Force in its photo recon versions of the Supermarine Spitfire and the deHavilland Mosquito. Installed in F-5E #43-28321, the F-52 was used in 14 missions during June, starting with sortie 33/716, a bomb damage assessment (BDA) flown over Calais by Leon McCurdy. It was used in the two weeks that followed mostly on BDAs over targets such as St. Lo and mapping missions against interior areas beyond Normandy.

Often, pilot visual reconnaissance yielded information as valuable as anything developed from the film. The official squadron history noted the following from mission sortie 33/887 and escort sortie 33/888 of June 22:

While the battle for the Cherbourg Peninsula was still underway, on 22 June 1944, Lts. [Bob] Adams and [Abram] Weaver, while returning from a photo mission on the Brest Peninsula, passed over Brest Harbour and noticed three warships of good size and fifteen to eighteen smaller craft seemingly ready to put out to sea. This information was flashed at once to higher authorities. Two days later, the English newspapers carried an account of an escorted enemy convoy being dispersed and sunk while proceeding from Brest, in what was thought to be an attempt at evacuation of part of the enemy troops on the Cherbourg Peninsula.

During post-flight debriefings, pilots often reported on Allied military activity they had observed, especially large bomber formations and naval engagements around the coasts of Normandy and Brittany.

Operations Reports for June

The following table reproduces the flight operations information for each F-5 combat sortie of the 33rd PRS in June 1944 while flying from Field 465, Chalgrove, England. Starting June 14, some missions began to fly with another F-5 as an escort. Separate sortie numbers were used for the mission aircraft and the escort plane.

All flight departures and arrivals are in military time, which is based on a 24-hour clock. For example, while "0800" is 8:00 am, "2000" is 8:00 pm. Additionally, Allied armed forces used British double daylight saving time. A flight taking off at 0800 (8:00 am) was actually taking off at 0600 (6:00 am) standard time. (Double daylight saving time is sometimes noted by the use of the letter "B" appearing as a suffix to the flight time, e.g., "0800B.")

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