V 1 Site at Vignacourt

V 1 Site at Vignacourt

A vertical aerial photograph of a V1 site at Vignacourt near Amiens. The V1 launching ramp can be seen amongst an orchard in the top right. Rough vehicle tracks leading to the site from the road are visible. The village is to the left with open farmland to the bottom. There is a brief description of why the photo was taken. The image is captioned '5011 106G. 818.12 June 44. F/36//MF 542 Sqdn;.

1944-06-12

One b/w photograph

This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.

PClaptonG20010012

[underlined] V I site at Vignacourt, N. France. [/underlined] Scale approx: 1:2000.

Churchill Vol: 5 p.186. ‘On June 11 Mr. Sandys sent a minute to the Air Staff asking that reconnaissance flights should be made at regular intervals over the Peenemunde area and that air photos should be obtained over all territory in N. France within 130 miles of London’ (i.e. to confirm reports of rocket build-up).

This Sortie was flown the following day. It was the photo seen in the ITV series, and also in Powys-Lybbe, ‘The Eye of Intelligence’ p.205.

Ramps were often very well concealed in woods, but track activity was always the give-away.

[photograph]
5011 106G. 818. 12. June. 44.F/36 11MF 342 Sqdn