page_title: Réseau AGIR
section_title: V-1 espionage
hierarchical_section_title: Réseau AGIR / V-1 espionage
caption_attribution_description: Diagram of World War II launch facility for the V-1 flying bomb Main articles for this image: Deutsch: Fieseler Fi 103 English: V-1 flying bomb (facilities) Français&#160;: V1 (missile) Titles and Captions in Published Works This is a diagram of a completed ski site at Maisoncelle in northern France. The launching ramp (P) had a double track enclosed in concrete walls. A self-powered dolly provided the initial thrust for the bomb. At first the Germans made little effort to conceal the sites, but repeated Crossbow bombing forced them to camouflage the areas. Further bombing attacks brought about a "modified site" program which used existing farm buildings. Portable sites were also used; they could be moved when they had been spotted by reconnaissance planes.[1] This wartime intelligence drawing shows the typical layout for a Bois-Carré site.[2] Diagram of a completed V-1 launching site at Maisoncelle, France.[3]
context_page_description: The Réseau AGIR was a World War II espionage group founded by French wartime resister Michel Hollard that provided decisive human intelligence on V-1 flying bomb facilities in the North of France. Thanks to Hollard's reports and information from his agents of the Réseau AGIR, the V1 launch sites located across North-Eastern Normandy to the Strait of Dover, were systematically bombed during Operation Crossbow.
context_section_description: Daudemard, an AGIR railway engineer at Rouen reported in July 1943 unusual constructions in Upper Normandy. Michel Hollard's report of September 1943 to the British Secret Intelligence Service identified six V-1 flying bomb facilities: "Bonnetot le Faubourg [sic], Auffay [sic], Totes, Ribeaucourt, Maison Ponthieu and Bois Carré".
  AGIR prepared a more detailed report in October about Bois Carré, which is located 1.4 km east of Yvrench, that claimed it had "a concrete platform with the center axis pointing directly to London". AGIR reconnoitered 104 V-1 facilities and helped pinpointing the Watten bunker, the first V-2 launching site.
  AGIR also provided sketches of V-1 launching sites such as one by André Comps of Bois-Carré. It was labeled "Yvrench B²" to deceive the Germans. "B" stands for "Bois" in French and "2" stands for the square root which in French is "Carré", hence Bois-Carré. Hollard had the site infiltrated by Comps, who worked as a drafter and copied "the blueprints"— a copy of the compass swinging building blueprint and the Bois-Carré sketch were published in 1978.
  At the same time, André Bouguet, SNCF station director and AGIR informant, noticed transports that led north via Rouen. The destination of these transports was the Auffay train station. With the help of René Bourdon, the station manager there, and his assistant Pierre Carteron, Hollard was able to penetrate a shed of the local sugar factory in which the transported V-1 were stored, hidden under a tarpaulin and made precise dimensional sketches of the devices. The S.I.S. found an astonishing resemblance to Danish Lt-Colonel Hasager Christiansen's sketch that he had made of an aircraft that crashed on Bornholm on 22 August 1943.
  Thanks to Hollard's reports and information from his agents of the Réseau AGIR, the V1 launch sites located in the North of France, across North-Eastern Normandy to the Strait of Dover, were systematically bombed by the Royal Air Force between mid-December 1943 and March-end 1944, as a part of the Operation Crossbow. Nine V1 sites were destroyed, 35 badly damaged and partially damaged another 25 out of the 104. As a result, the Germans changed their strategy and started building lighter and more camouflaged positions.
  In his book Crusade in Europe General Eisenhower wrote that had the Germans been able to develop their weapons six months earlier and to target Britain's south coast, Operation Overlord would have been near impossible, or not at all possible. Winston Churchill, in Triumph and Tragedy also paid tribute to the sources of the British intelligence and reckoned that "Our intelligence had played a vital part. The size and performance and the intended scale of attack were known to us in excellent time [...] The launching sites and the storage caverns were found, enabling our fighters to delay the attack and mitigate its violence."
caption: AGIR provided HUMINT on V-1 flying bomb "ski sites", e.g., some had launch ramps ("P", bottom),[31] here Maisoncelle.[32][33][34][35]
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