大象传媒

AIRWARSPOTTING AT BREDA IN THE SOUTH OF HOLLAND.DURING WW2

Bombing Gilze-Rijen airport, near Breda on August 15th.1944 by the RAF. Sunday morning about 12.00 hour I was walking somewhere in Breda when I heard an impressive sound of planes coming my way. A little bit later I saw the first ones coming, low over Breda. Altogether, I heard later, 102 Avro Lancaster鈥檚, 2 Mosquito鈥檚 and one Lightning passed rather low, I think about 3000 ft., for direction the airport, 6 km. further.
We didn鈥檛 see Lancasters before during the day because they did the night bombing and passed many times our town for bombing Germany It was amazing to see all the planes now on a bright day and so low flying and to hear more then 400 engines!
The German Flak was shooting between the planes but didn鈥檛 hit one plane I heard later.
A little bit later, to be exact between 12.04 and 12.15 hour, they dropped nearly 600 tons (about 1000 bombs) on the airfield and hit the runways and buildings. The attack was a great success. Later we saw an enormous dust-cloud, kilometers high on this bright sunny Sunday
For us in occupied Holland we where very proud of all those British and American heroes in the air and without the Royal Air Force and the US Air Force probably the war was much more difficult to win. We will never forget our Liberators!
This is one of the stories about WW2 and now I am writing a SPOTTERSBOOK 1940-1945, about this matter. (in Dutch) dedicated to all the brave crews of the Allied Air Forces.
Frank de Leeuw

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