1944 IN THE MIRABEAU DEFILE Claude MESNIL
2013
THE COMBAT ENGINEER CORPS August 15, 1944 : the Maquis, commandos1 and aerial bombing blocked in the hinterland the routing of the German renforcements during the precarious landing phase on the beaches of Provence. The resultant destructions also hampered the retreat of their fighters fleeing from the coast. The Allied progress would have been delayed in its turn without the support of the « Combat Engineers ». This Corps often works in a dangerous environment : by by by by by by
opening passages in the minefields. disrupting impassable areas of barbed wire. creating, clearing or repairing roads and tracks. installing temporary bridges to replace those destroyed. rehabilitating or constructing runways. saboting engineering structures for imped enemy advance.
THE RUNWAY NEAR MIRABEAU Unknown in Europe, the Caterpillar bulldozer surprised. Powerful, efficient, versatile, it was able to clear rubble of razed cities, to fill in the shell craters, to push obstacles, to open tracks, to arrange airplanes runways, to level the ground for storage areas, etc… Some of them were armoured. A model D·7 of the 120th Engineers leveled an earth runway for small observation planes between the « De Clapier » farm and the Durance river. This airstrip received shortly after the comings and goings of numerous planes of liaison required by the activity of the staff of General Eagles, commanding the 45th Infantry Division, whose caravan stayed a few days in the shade of the trees in the farm park. THE TREADWAY PONTOON BRIDGE ON THE DURANCE RIVER2 NEAR MIRABEAU Fast enough, the installation of this kind of bridge required an air compressor and a crane trucks. Two treads attached to metal soles distributed the load on the surface of floats (opposite, right). A central inner tube could enhance flotation and thus the unbearable weight (opposite, left). Anchors upstream retained the full assembly in the flow of the river.
The Maquis having cut the bridge of Mirabeau, Engineers and local Partisans chose the site of a pontoon bridge in charge of the military transit towards the Alps mountains. Borne by 12 floats, it was 50 yd long. An impressive equipment was stored on the other bank at its opening, on 20 in the late afternoon. A stream of jeeps, tanks, cannons, tankers, trucks and personnel carriers began on 21 (a returning convoy on 22 above).
Inspired by a french cannon of W.W.1., the 155 mm artillery gun M·1 « Long Tom » shot 100 lb shells up to 14 miles at the firing rate of 40 per hour (right on August 25). Height wheels, retractables for the most accurate fire, carried its 14 tons. The choice of a certain lightness favored the speed, the agility, the reliability, and thus the availability, of the U.S. tanks. Only a grouped fight, often from a dangerous distance (« shoot and scoot » tactic), could pierce the armor of the biggest panzers, Tiger or Panther. The U.S. war industrie therefore made important series whereas mechanics after the fights quickly reconstituted some from wrecks… The M·4 Sherman was produced in 49,234 copies. The German blitzkriegs in Europe aroused its study. Its range did not exceed 100 miles3. This tank for the support of the infantry did not intend to defy the biggest panzers. A simple impact could inflamed its 32 tons. 1945 saw a model with a dreaded cannon.
The M·10 Destroyer was produced in 6,706 copies. Its open turret made it quite low and thus more discreet on the lookout in the nature to destroy tanks, but also weak face to the grenade launchers, the hunters in a nose-down and the fights in town. Its 30 tons could cover 200 miles on a road at 25 mi/h.
Maintained every day by a portable compressor, the pressure in the floats declined slowly after the abandon of the site. When in September the French Engineering rehabilitated partially the bridge of Mirabeau, the rubber was cut to resole shoes because everything was then lacking. A floods took away the parts made of metal… TODAY · 69 years of plowings exclude being able to locate the runway face to the farm (below, left)… · the prints of the vehicles before the Treadway bridge persists (under and top), but tall grasses are near and are progressing. A tyre used as a damper for the hinged begining of the bridge overtakes.
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9,700 Anglo-Saxons dropped by 535 planes on August 15 1944 from 4:30 am, 465 gliders of weapons and men of witch 148 were broken at landing killing 20 pilots.
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feared for its sudden summer floods linked to the storms in the valleys upstream.
they consumed 1 mpg on the road, much more to the fight, but two times less than the biggest german tanks.
