Monday, 29th December
WW2 Special Edition: Vichy French Submarine | Baltic B-17 | Hitler’s Atlantik Wall | Ena Collymore-Woodstock | The Second Great Fire of London
Thunder Beneath the Waves: WW2 French Submarine Found off Cadiz Coast
Researchers from the universities of Cadiz and Western Brittany have discovered a Vichy French submarine scuttled in November 1942 near Cadiz during Operation Torch, the name of the Allied landings in Vichy-controlled French North Africa.
Le Tonnant, an ocean-going Redoubtable-class submarine based in Casablanca as part of Marshal Pétain’s collaborationist Vichy regime’s forces, was scuttled at sea after damage sustained during and after the Naval Battle of Casablanca prevented the crew, whose commanding officer had been killed, reaching Toulon.
The exact location of Le Tonnant (The Thunder) was lost before researchers from Cadiz and West Brittany used desk-based assessments of newly-available logbooks to narrow down the search area, subsequently using multibeam sonar mapping to locate the wreck within this zone.
The discovery bears witness to a short-lived survivor of a major air and sea battle within Operation Torch and provides rare insight into Vichy naval resistance.
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Press Release
University of Western Brittany: Découverte historique: Le sous-marin Le Tonnant retrouvé 83 ans après son sabordage! (web translation available) | YouTube: Première Plongée sur l’Epave du Tonnant
Article
The Olive Press: Eight-decade mystery ends as WWII French submarine is found off Cadiz
‘This tumult in the clouds’ B-17 Flying Fortress Discovered in the Baltic
A project by Texas A&M and U.S. Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) is uncovering and identifying a World War Two B-17 bomber found on the Baltic seabed.
The B-17 ‘Flying Fortress’ lies at a depth of 10-15m off the Danish coast. Originally located by a local diver in 2001, a 2025 survey by Texas A&M University confirmed the aircraft type. While the wreckage is highly fragmented and distributed across a large debris field, parts of the wings, a propeller, tyre/tire, and a cockpit window from the 1943 crash were visible.
Critically, two .50-caliber machine guns were also recovered, allowing researchers to read serial numbers they hope will identify the specific aircraft and, most importantly, name its crew members. Texas A&M’s Dr Katie Custer Bojakowski noted:
‘On the aircraft wreckage, it’s really important to find the machine guns [...] They are a controlled item in the military and so are not only stamped with a serial number, but their location on any given aircraft was also tightly controlled throughout the war.
‘As more archival research is done on the serial numbers, we’ll have a positive identification of the aircraft, and then a positive identification of the people who were known to be lost on the aircraft’.
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Texas A&M Press Release: Texas A&M Research Team Begins Search for Missing Crew of WWII Bomber | YouTube: A MISSION UNFINISHED: Uncovering a Lost WW2 B-17
Popular Science: 80 years ago, a WWII B-17 bomber crashed in the Baltic. Scientists are finally learning who was onboard
Another Brick in the Wall: Discovery of Nazi ‘Atlantikwall’ Gun Emplacement
An ecological project on the sand dunes of Flanders has uncovered the remains of a WW2 gun emplacement that was part of Hitler’s ‘Atlantikwall’ coastal defence system.
Stretching from France’s border with Spain to northern Norway, the non-continuous system of strongpoints, perhaps most notably at Normandy, was intended to slow an Allied invasion.
Often built with forced labour, many examples of the fortifications and artillery positions remain on the beaches and coasts of western and northern Europe, including this newly-discovered Kampfwagenkanone emplacement from ‘Stützpunkt Goltz’ in Belgium.
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Onroerend Erfgoed: Een verborgen stukje Tweede Wereldoorlog dook opnieuw op | Sketchfab 3D model: DUNIAS Bredene afweergeschut (web translation available)
‘I hadn’t joined up just to type’ - Ena Collymore-Woodstock, WW2 Veteran
Ena Collymore-Woodstock, who has died at the age of 108, was both a World War Two veteran and a pioneer in a highly distinguished legal career.
Born in Spanish Town in 1917 and brought up in Kingston, Jamaica, the outbreak of the Second World War saw Collymore-Woodstock volunteer for the Auxiliary Territorial Service. Travelling to the UK in 1943, Ena rejected a clerical role at the War Office, advising her superiors that she had not travelled that distance for an office job:
‘I didn’t come here to do what I was doing at home. I told them that I hadn’t joined up just to type. I wanted to see more of the world - I was very adventurous and wanted more responsibility and more action.
‘They sent me to an evaluation unit where they decided where you could be placed. I was tested, and they said I could go into any unit, so I selected [the] anti-aircraft [service] and I started my training as a radar operator’.
Collymore-Woodstock served in this role both in the UK and also near the German border in Belgium, plotting German aerial activity near the front line, later reflecting that: ‘I wasn’t ever afraid. We didn’t think much about what could go wrong’.
Studying law at Gray’s Inn after the war, Collymore-Woodstock was called to the Bar in 1948, returning to Jamaica and becoming the first female Clerk of the Court in 1950.
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The Telegraph: Ena Collymore-Woodstock, oldest surviving British Army veteran of the Second World War
The National Caribbean Monument Charity: Meet the remarkable 104-year-old who’s the British Army’s oldest surviving female veteran
TODAY IN HISTORY
The Second Great Fire of London, 29-30th December, 1940
On this day in 1940, a massive Luftwaffe incendiary raid started a conflagration known as the Second Great Fire of London, the name seemingly first given to it by a US war correspondent. Part of the London Blitz, the attack was concentrated on the City of London and created a mass fire that destroyed or damaged many historic structures.
PHOTO OF THE DAY
QUOTE OF THE DAY
As a quondam WW2 archaeologist, I loved writing this edition!