Courage

[Cyclefrance]

Interesting to find this topic. There's been a quite a lot of WW programmes and articles circulating this year. I was watching a programme a few weeks back about the reconnaissance Spitfires that flew missions into Europe, France , Belgium, etc., and even into Germany as far as Berlin.

All the more remarkable as these planes were stripped of their fire-power - all they had was blue painted body to make them blend in with the sky! Their task was to take photographs of prospective bomb sites and of those that had been bombed, plus also missions to discover changes in the landscape that might suggest the development of weapons sites. Such missions over northern France and Belgium discovered the launch ramps that were being constructed to send the pilotless flying bombs that would devastate southern England in the latter half of the war nicknamed 'doodle-bugs' by Londoners and known more correctly as V1s. These missions also led to the detection of the more sinister V2 rocket sites at places like Blockhaus and La Coupole, now museums.

As if this wasn't interesting enough, two weeks a later a friend sent me a link to a youtube video about an American stationed over here who had flown these blue spitfires. The personal approach to this short film makes it all the more interesting and, in places, chilling. The link is here