Operation Savanna
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Operation Savanna | |
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Location | 47°43′05″N 2°45′46″W / 47.7181°N 2.7628°W |
Planned by | Special Operations Executive |
Objective | Killing German pathfinder pilots. |
Date | 15 March 1941 - 5 April 1941 |
Executed by | United Kingdom Free France |
Outcome | Main Allied objective failed |
Operation Savanna (or Operation Savannah)
This SOE mission, requested by the Air Ministry, was to ambush and kill as many pilots as possible of the Kampfgruppe 100, a German Pathfinder formation stationed at Meucon airfield which spearheaded night raids on Britain.
Setting off from an RAF Whitley on the moonlit[2] night of 15 March 1941, five paratroops made a blind drop at midnight, landing some eight miles east of the town of Vannes (where the Pathfinder crew billeted), and five miles off target. The following day they discovered the pilots no longer commuted between Vannes and Meucon by bus, but had taken to travelling on an ad hoc basis by cars. Hence the grand ambush and assassination had to be aborted.
Seeking to gain something from the mission, Captain
One of the men was already missing and another failed to make the rendezvous. After several nights watching from the sand dunes, on 4/5 April, Bergé saw
The Free French paratroops went on to later form the
See also
References
- Footnotes
- Notes
- ^ Foot 1966, pp. 157–159.
- ^ Moon Phases 1941.
- Bibliography
- ISBN 0-563-20193-2.
- Foot, M.R.D. (1966). SOE in France. HMSO.
- Keene, Tom (2014). Britain's Band of Brothers. Spellmount. ASIN B00HXYDCN8.
- "Moon Phases 1941". Calendar-12.com. Retrieved 17 May 2015.