Operation BINDER
P/O Austin and his regular crew fly this operation to Belgium, the approximate target location only known from the mention of Cambrai in Austin’s report, and of Celles/Champlon in his wireless-operator’s logbook. Pierre Tillet, author of the ‘Infiltrations into France’ document on the the Plan Sussex 1944 website, has directed me to a paragraph in Emmanuel Debruyne’s ‘La Maison de Verre’, a 2006 paper on Intelligence operations in Belgium, which identifies the agent and his organisation.
Austin takes off at 22.25, crosses the English coast at Newhaven and the French coast at Pointe Haut-Banc at 00.10. Flying via Arras and Cambrai, the target is somewhere in the rolling hills of the Ardennes south of Marche-en-Famenne. There is no reception for the agent, who is dropped at 02.32. His parachute is seen to open but he is not seen on the ground.
The agent was Joseph Austraet, the first W/T operator intended for the ‘Zéro’ intelligence circuit, founded by Fernand Kerkhofs early in 1941. Debruyne wrote that it was several months before Austraet became active, and he was arrested shortly after making a few transmissions. Debruyne does not mention Austraet in his later paper, ‘La guerre sécrète des espions Belges’ (though he does write about Kerkhofs and Zéro), which explains why I missed him earlier.
Austin and his crew drop leaflets over Cambrai, and return by the same route. With cloud covering the English coastline, they use an H/F (High-Frequency) fix from Tangmere as a turning point, which takes them there before they return to Newmarket at 05.25.
Operations LUCKYSHOT, HIRELING, RHOMBOID
P/O Smith is also 2nd Pilot on the second attempt to drop LUCKYSHOT; this time he has Sgt Reimer as his skipper. They fly much the same route as Hockey the night before, taking off early at 18.45. Instead of thick cumulus they are faced with low cloud and thick ground-haze over the highly-industrialised area of coalfields and steelworks around Charleroi. They therefore abandon the operation, and set off to drop HIRELING and RHOMBOID. They encounter the same conditions over the second target, so abandon and head for home.
Reimer reports ‘a large belt of searchlights at Florennes’, south-east of Charleroi; not surprising, for there is a Luftwaffe fighter base just outside the town. The same cannot be said for the searchlights they encounter at Beaumont, further west. They experience no flak, so perhaps the Florennes defences hold their fire to avoid giving away the airfield’s existence to a lone enemy aircraft that might be a British night-fighter.
Reimer lands back at Newmarket at 02.30.
Operation BEAU GESTE
This sortie, flown by F/Lt Jackson, follows an unusual route for SD operations: out via Taunton, then south over the Devon coast at Seaton, to make landfall at Le Bréhat, on the north coast of Brittany, at 21.05. The target is reached at 21.33, about half an hour’s flying-time from Le Bréhat; so perhaps 70 miles away, and therefore still within Brittany. This part of France is generally off-limits to SOE: SIS has made clear to the junior organisation that it will brook no activity that might threaten the peaceful passage of spies and information. There is no information available about BEAU GESTE or its purpose, but the operation is completed at 21.36.
Jackson returns the way he came, via Seaton and Taunton. He is guided by an avenue of searchlights for the eight-minute leg from the Devon coast to Taunton, and he lands at Newmarket at 00.30.
Operation COLUMBA
Operations BINDER, LUCKYSHOT, etc.
It is possible that P/O Austin dropped pigeons on his sortie, for a few returned to the UK shortly afterwards, and no other sortie fits. In his report, however, Austin only mentions dropping leaflets. Likewise, Sgt Reimer on LUCKYSHOT, etc. made no mention of pigeon-dropping.
BEAU GESTE
It is possible that Jackson’s sortie may have been related to Operation Columba, but none of the pigeons that returned to the UK in October came from the Brittany area. (This does not, however, definitely rule out pigeons: many could have been dropped, but none returned.)
Sources
BINDER
TNA AIR 20/8334, Encl. 81A
Logbooks, S/Ldrs Austin and Livingstone
Emmanuel Debruyne: ‘La Maison de Verre: agents et reseaux de renseignements en Belgique occupée, 1940-44 (2005-6), p.347.
LUCKYSHOT, HIRELING, RHOMBOID
TNA AIR 20/8334, Encl. 84A
BEAU GESTE
TNA AIR 20/8334, Encl. 91A