Among them, the Centre d'Instruction B26. This unit was a bomber flying school located in Tunisia that operated both B-26B and B-26C and was located in Algeria first and later in Tunisia.
Another Free France's unit that operated the B-26C was the GBM I/19 "Gascogne" (GBM stands for Groupe de Bombardment Moyen - Medium Bombardment Group) that started to train on the B-26 in Tunisia replacing their Douglas DB-7 on 21st February 1944. Shortly later, on 1st April 1944 the squadron finished their training and, operating from Châteaudun-du-Rhumel, in Algeria together with the Groupes Bretagne and Maroc that were already operating from there.
The squadron was rebased in Sardinia and, on 15th May, they performed their first combat mission attacking communications hubs in La Spezia, North-Western Italy. They remained with those kind of missions until November, when they were rebased to Istres, Southern France first and the Lyon-Bron airbase later in order to perform missions against German soil. They remained there until being disbanded in September 1945.
Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_B-26_Marauder#France
2. http://ec1-91gascogne.fr/trad_escadron.php (translated)
No comments:
Post a Comment