Hat Tip www.pilotenbunker.de
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
Posted on 04/03/2006 10:27:26 AM PDT by Alter Kaker
Pierre Clostermann, an ace fighter pilot who flew for de Gaulle's Free French forces in World War II, engaging in fierce combat in the Battle of Britain and over Normandy on D-Day, died March 22 at his home in Montesquieu des Albères in southwestern France. He was 85.
After the war, Mr. Clostermann became a pillar of Gaullist politics.
French newspapers, from the national Le Monde and Le Figaro to the regional press, registered his death as the passing of one the country's last true war heroes. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin eulogized him as a "legend and an example" to all citizens.
After France fell to the Germans in 1940, Mr. Clostermann heeded de Gaulle's call for the French to continue the fight on the side of the Allies. He trained with the Royal Air Force and fought in the Battle of Britain and over Continental Europe. In three years he flew more than 420 combat sorties, shot down 33 enemy aircraft and possibly more, and rose to command a fighter wing.
After the war, he worked as an aeronautical engineer and became a vice president of the Cessna Aircraft Company. He also entered politics and spent 23 years as a high-profile Gaullist in the French legislature until giving up his seat in 1969.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
There was at least one Frenchman that didn't surrender.
What did he fly? Does the article say?
How can they not put that in the lead? It would be, what, three more words?
A Spitfire Mk IX and The Tempest.
I was only able to post an excerpt. Full article says he flew Spitfires and Hawker Tempests. It doesn't mention that in addition to a large number of German aircraft, he also destroyed 225 trucks, 72 locomotives, 5 tanks, and 2 torpedo boats, and straffed the German positions on D-Day.
In the end he flied a Tempest he named "Le Grand Charles", which can be translated as both "The Tall Charles" and "the Great Charles", and clearly was his tribute to Free France leader General Charles de Gaulle.
Hat Tip www.pilotenbunker.de
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
A small history with pictures, worth the read.
http://imansolas.freeservers.com/Aces/pierre_henri_clostermann.htm
Sounds like an extinct breed of frog.
More information here - see **
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/03/25/db2501.xml&sSheet=/portal/2006/03/25/ixportal.html
Pierre Henri Clostermann, the son of a French diplomat, was born on February 28 1921 at Curitibia, in Brazil. When he was nine he was sent to be educated in Paris. After rejoining his parents in Brazil he obtained his private pilot's licence in November 1937.
When war broke out he wanted to enlist in the French Air Force, but was **refused permission**; so instead he left for the United States, where he studied aeronautical engineering at the Ryan Flying College in Los Angeles. His father opted to support Charles de Gaulle, and in April 1942 Pierre joined the Free French Air Force and travelled to England.
His book "The Big Show", is IMO the absolute best book on WWII in the air.
Interestingly, individual French soldiers can be and have been as brave as any anywhere. It's their leadership that fails them.
Sound familiar?
God Bless him
not all Frenchies are wimps
"Interestingly, individual French soldiers can be and have been as brave as any anywhere. It's their leadership that fails them.
Sound familiar?"
Indeed!
Is this not the case for French, and Americans, and British, and Germans, and Russians, and Chinese, and ... pretty much every other people on the face of the earth, who have been driven to war by murderous tyrants, or commanded in war by incompetent careerist boobs?
Like this for example:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1675992.stm
I read his WW II autobiography, a Ballantine paperback version. He flew all of the Spitfire models and was one of the first to fly the Hawker Tempest, possbly the fastest prop fighter of the war. He used to sit in the cockpit on the runway in southern England on hot standby to chase and shoot down the V-1 flying bombs. Soory I can't think of the book title. He was quite a guy, and a terrific pilot.
He flew Spits. That wasn't so hard to mention, was it? In this excellent article in the Telegraph, they got right to the point.
Five days after the invasion he landed on a temporary airstrip in Normandy; he was one of the first French pilots to touch down on French soil, four years to the day after de Gaulle's famous radio address calling the French to resistance. Clostermann and two French colleagues had put on their best uniforms, but immediately regretted it when clouds of fine dust billowed up as their Spitfires landed; within seconds they resembled workers in a flour factory. Sixty years later, on June 6 2004, he was present when a road at Longues-sur-Mer, near the airstrip where he had landed, was named after him.
Longues-sur-Mer is halfway (roughly) between the Mulberries at Arromanches-les-Bains and Omaha Beach. No doubt the airstrip was perched near the top of the cliffs there, where some excellent relics of the Atlantic Wall can still be explored today.
I know it well from a research trip in 1999, and we'll be touring it again in June.
French jokes should be put aside on a thread like this, and we should all remember fondly a great warrior pilot like M. Clostermann.
That's the book title "The Big Show". Thanks
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