WILLY FEY’S TIGER TANK IN THE SEINE

A group of enthusiasts of the second world war is active to clarify a mystery: is there a German tank at the bottom of the Seine, near the Jeanne d’Arc Bridge?

In any case, this is what a German veteran, former tank chief, told them.

 

 

In Ouistreham (Calvados), the Atlantic Wall team aims to create an archaeological museum of the Second World War. For several months, she travels the region to find military remains. Four planes, seven gliders and a US tank are already on the hunting board of the association. Remains found in the Eure.

It is towards Rouen that the eyes of these enthusiasts turn, since a veteran of the German army, the lieutenant Willy Fey, since deceased, told them the accident happened of his tank of the Tigre type, on August 25th 1944, 300 meters downstream from the Jeanne d’Arc Bridge. On August 25th, the liberation of Rouen is near (it will intervene on the 30th). The Germans are retreating. Leaving the Normandy front, they think they can retreat to the East. So they rush to Rouen where they hope to cross the Seine. But deceived by false signs installed by the Resistance, they rush into a mousetrap: the banks of the left bank. Thousands of men, vehicles and tons of equipment want to cross the Seine, using floating bridges made of barges interconnected, installed) the place of the bridges destroyed.

“Willy Fey’s Tiger would then have done a wrong maneuver: instead of gently approaching the barge, slightly elevated, in order to climb on it, the tank would have hit it.The barge would have, then retreated, leaving the Tiger, on his momentum, dive into the Seine “, says Brigitte Corbin, of the Atlantic Wall Museum, according to the testimony of the tank commander, who escaped unscathed.

A misfortune, after all, anecdotal, except that it leaves a question unanswered: what has become of this tank, which nobody has ever fished out? According to Brigitte Corbin, there is every chance that the craft is still at the bottom of the river …

Stuck in the vase ?

It is surprising that the wreck passed through the various dredging carried out by the Port of Rouen in this area, but on the Port side, we do not reject the hypothesis, explaining that it is quite possible that a tank of this size and weight was quickly silted, passing through the mesh of river dredges.
Anyway, the officials of the museum of the wall of Atlantic have taken a passion for this enigma and intend to know the end of the story. “We have obtained from the Brigade de Gendarmerie fluviale the commitment that it will carry out research in the days to come,” says Brigitte Corbin, who also does not exclude the use of divers from England.

The mystery of the Tiger should soon be lifted. It will then be time for Calvados researchers to take an interest in the fate of other tanks, which also fell in the Seine … on the side of Duclair.

7 Comments

  1. James Stewart Reply
    October 5, 2019

    Amazing story looking forward to hearing more in due course, good luck in this search.

  2. Dear Sir/Madam,

    I am very much interested in this project to save a potential Tiger from the mud of the Seine.
    Would you have any updates of the project?

    Kind Regards,

    Emmet

  3. Let it be a myth – for the lost German soldiers of former times.

  4. Steven Platt Reply
    January 25, 2021

    Keep me posted 👍

  5. Dr. Felton,
    ………I was a tanker in the US ARMY, from 1966 to 1989, and with all my tours in West Germany (almost 10 total yrs), assigned to different Kassernes in Germany, always heard the rumors that there were Tiger tanks in tunnels below our tank motor pools from WWII……..ie, Wildflecken, Mainz, Baumholder and Ansbach……………Whenever german civilian engineers/electric techs would go underground, we would ask them about the rumors…> They never gave us an answer??…..
    …Funny thing was,, in the basements of the old German Army barracks we were living in, we could find places in the walls and floors of stairwells, there were bricked up places that were not part of the original construction, but added later………..Have you ever heard of these rumors.,,,ty..BH

  6. Has anyone tried trawling the river bottom with a Cesium Vapor Magnetometer? A 19th century railway locomotive buried four meters under a city street was located using this device. The Tiger and the locomotive are roughly the same size and density…

  7. Sam Colenbrander Reply
    August 15, 2021

    Any updates on this project and the seatch? I’d like to help and assist, you guys should try a floating radar device.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *