Category Archives: Operations

Saturday, 1 November 1941

Operation CHILBLAIN

This operation appears to have been planned for the night of 31 October in Whitley ‘F’, but this aircraft went U/S at 1935, and so the operation had to be postponed. On 1 November Reimer takes Whitley ‘B’, the aircraft Murphy used the night before to deliver SIS operations LOUIS/BEAVER and EMILE. Unfortunately no-one recorded which Whitley a/c ‘B’ was. The Stradishall logbook confirms that this operation takes place on the night of 1 November, not 31 October as recorded in the ops summary that accompanied the pilots’ operations reports for the October/November period.

Sgt Reimer’s report is characteristically brief, but marginally inaccurate in that he appears to have crossed the coast half an hour before he took off. The Stradishall log confirms that take-off was at 18.57, and Reimer therefore crosses the east coast at 19.35. Course is set for a point north of Esjberg, an unhealthy pinpoint due to heavy AA defences, and they climb through freezing cloud to 9,000 feet. The wings and airscrews start icing up, but stops once they are above it. On ETA for Esjberg there is still no break in the cloud sheet below, and they start descending through the cloud. The aircraft starts icing up again, and they have to abandon. They set course for Esjberg, then England. Over the sea they break could, and land back at base at 03.00.

Operation BULLSEYE: Portreath to Gibraltar

The weather over France is still poor. Jackson has obtained permission to proceed to Malta via Gibraltar. This will allow him to fly by daylight over the Atlantic, passing the Bay of Biscay and skirting the west coast of Spain and Portugal.

We have Austin’s detailed report of the outward journey but Jackson’s report, which covers the whole expedition but not his own flight, says little about his own trip. I discussed this operation with Austin several times, and once with my father. They appear to have flown to Gibraltar at about the same time as Jackson, but perhaps not together.

Austin takes off at 08.15, Jackson at 08.30. Austin, in Z9159, flies to the Scilly Isles to get a navigation fix from as far west as possible, then sets course for ‘Point ‘A’ (48° 18’N; 5° 35’W), some 25 miles off Ushant; later turning points are near Cape Finisterre and Cape St Vincent. Austin flies some ten miles off the Portugese and Spanish coastline, keeping it in sight in the now-clear weather. Turning towards the Straits, past Cape Trafalgar, Austin passes the Rock to seaward and lines up to land. After some eight hours in the air the Whitley’s fuel-load has lightened: the centre of gravity is more susceptible to the weight of the additional crew and cargo in the rear fuselage, and has shifted aft.

Gibraltar’s runway is rather short for a bomber aircraft. The runway is currently being lengthened to provide a concrete surface of 1550 yards, but this is still under construction, using rubble from the caves being tunnelled inside the Rock for defence. The winds around the rock are notoriously variable both in strength and direction, entirely without warning. On this occasion the air traffic controller changes the landing direction (either 090 or 270) at least four times, once when Austin is in the final stages of landing, when a Whitley is vulnerable to stall even when normally loaded.

Austin’s aircraft is now very low on fuel. It is loaded with containers intended for Mihailovic’s Cetnicks. With two additional crew aboard, totalling eight, the Whitley’s CofG is dangerously far aft, making a stall and crash a distinct probability. Austin jettisons the containers in the harbour, and summons the crew to move as far forward into the Whitley’s nose as they can. Everyone bar the pilot crams themselves into the front turret, the well beside the pilot, and the bomb-aimer’s compartment. Austin gets a red flare signalling him to go around due to the varying wind velocities; Austin, perhaps uninformed of the Rock’s local turbulence, believes the controller to be drunk. Austin has no choice but to plonk the Whitley down, disregarding yet another red flare. Later the harbourmaster tries to get a new suit out of Austin, claiming that he had to jump into the harbour to avoid Austin’s Whitley. It’s not clear whether Austin’s containers are recovered. From later events I assume not; at least not before the Whitleys leave for Malta.

Sources

CHILBLAIN

TNA AIR 20/8334, Encl. 96A
Stradishall Ops Officers’ log.

Portreath – Gibraltar

TNA AIR 20/8334, Encls 99A (Austin’s report) and 101A (Jackson’s report)
Conversations with S/Ldrs Austin & Livingstone.

Friday, 31 October 1941

Operations LOUIS/BEAVER and EMILE

Murphy and his crew take off in Whitley ‘B’ from Newmarket at 18.45, and Murphy flies via Abingdon to reach Tangmere an hour later. Pinpointing over Abbeville at 20.50, they soon find navigation difficult: unseasonable heavy snowfalls have rendered the roads and rooftops almost invisible. They find the Marne and follow the river to Chalons-sur-Marne, from where they set course to the target. Map-reading is still impossible, and the agents are dropped about 8 miles south-west of the target pinpoint at 22.14.

On their return journey they drop leaflets and some of their pigeons over Noyon, in what Murphy calls ‘our usual diversion’ (Operation Columba, from which one pigeon – No. 81, from agent ‘Hotus 62 B’, near Amiens – is returned with a message), then drop the rest of the pigeons over Abbeville before heading for Tangmere. After landing back at Newmarket at 01.15, they find that one pigeon has ‘hung-up’, his tiny parachute-canopy lodged in the tail-wheel. The pigeon, ‘although somewhat shaken, was released the next morning and returned to its cote’.

There is little information available about this SIS operation for the Belgian intelligence service. The target is near Chalons-sur-Marne, and all are to be dropped together; it is safer to drop agents outside Belgium due to the high probability of informers in both Low Countries. Murphy’s report is headed ‘EMILE, LOUIS’, but Farley’s first summary (which accompanies the October/November reports and identifies EMILE/LOUIS as SIS) pairs LOUIS with BEAVER, with EMILE as a separate operation. This accords with the Air Transport Form, which also pairs LOUIS with BEAVER, but it is originally scheduled for the 28th, with ‘Cancelled’ against it in pencil.

LOUIS/BEAVER is the third pairing of agent and wireless-operator to be sent in, the success of the MILL pairing in August having shown the way forward. The identity of EMILE and LOUIS remained a mystery to me until Pierre Tillet emailed me with details about Maurice LAFRIQUE, a wireless operator dropped as EMILE. From his personal file at SHD, Vincennes (which dates his insertion to 30-31 October), it appears that all three were dropped near Vitry-le-François, to the south-east of Chalons-sur-Marne, which accords with Murphy’s account. Lafrique goes to Lille, but his file does not indicate which organisation he worked for. Most likely this was an SIS-sponsored intelligence circuit, so far unidentified. He realises that the Germans are after him, and attempts to make his return to England via Spain. On 7 March 1942 Lafrique is arrested by the Gestapo while attempting to cross the border into the ZNO at MOULINS. Ten days later he is transferred to Dijon, then to Fresnes, Romainville, and Compiègne before being deported to Germany at the end of April 1943: to Sachsenhausen, then Falkensen. Liberated by the Russians almost exactly two years later, he is returned to France in June 1945.

Pierre has also pointed me towards Belgian historian Emmanuel Debruyne who had turned up the name of Wladimir (or Vladimir) van Damme as BEAVER. Before the war, van Damme had been a policeman in Schaerbeek, a north-eastern suburb of Brussels. Debruyne believes that BEAVER was dropped on 17 November 1941, but this may have been when BEAVER and LOUIS made it to Belgium. They proceed to establish an intelligence service, but don’t last long: they are arrested on 14 February 1942. Debruyne points out that the date is grimly appropriate, for van Damme is arrested at 19 rue du Lac, Ixelles, betrayed to the Germans by a woman jealous over van Damme. This denunciation leads to the arrest of a dozen people, including Edmond Desnerck and Victor Louis.

Sources

TNA AIR20/8334, encl. 98A
TNA AIR 20/8306 (ATFs)
Debruyne, La Guerre Sécrète des Espions Belges, p.28
Debruyne, La_maison_de_verre: agents et reseaux de renseignements en Belgique Occupée 1940-1944, p 129.

Monday, 13 October 1941

Operation MAINMAST

The operation

Three nights after P/O Austin’s strenuous effort at the limit of a Whitley’s endurance, F/Lt Murphy makes a final attempt to complete this operation at the very end of the moon period. Murphy and his crew takes off from Newmarket at 18.10 and they fly via Cabourg for Tours, but due to what Murphy later refers to as ‘varying wind velocities’ the Whitley crosses the Loire 20 miles up-river. He flies down-river to Tours before heading south to Limoges. Murphy notes that there is no blackout over Tours (which is in the Occupied Zone but close to the border with the ZNO) but when the Whitley arrives over Toulouse just after 11.30, in the Unoccupied Zone which might reasonably be assumed less unfriendly, the town lights below go out street by street, and Murphy believes he sees flak bursting above the aircraft.

They set course for the target. It appears that the reception party is using a car’s headlamps 3 km north of the pinpoint to act as a final reference point before the triangle of lights at the target. Murphy does a quick circuit and then straight into his run-up to drop the two agents and a pair of containers. The crew sees only one parachute, but the canopies are camouflaged, and there is no moon; they have arrived at the target before the moon, in its last-quarter, has risen. They check and find that the container containing mail has hung up in the racks. By this time the triangle of lights has gone out, so they attempt to drop it by the car headlights. The container stays hung-up. They make one more attempt without success, then return to Toulouse where the blackout is now complete. A searchlight lights up, but fails to find them. They head for home, and land back at Newmarket at 05.10.

The agents

The two agents are Sgt Jean Forman and his wireless-operator René Periou; both are Free French soldiers of Dewavrin’s BCRA. Forman has been on both the SAVANNA and the JOSEPHINE B operations, and has made his way back to England each time. This time they are received on the ground by Henri Labit, Forman’s comrade from SAVANNA, and Labit’s chef du réseau Professor Pierre Bertaux of Toulouse University.

Forman’s new task is to contact the several home-grown resistance groups in south-west France and mould them into a cohesive organisation under De Gaulle’s control. This is a tall order for a young man like Forman, for the only common link between these groups is a focus on preserving themselves and their different political beliefs for the day when France is liberated. To these groups the idea that their authority should be ceded to a self-appointed leader of the French who has chosen exile in Britain is anathema. It will take more than a young firebrand like Forman to achieve anything. It will take someone whose authority has been based on France’s pre-Armistice civilian government to mould the disparate groups into an effective organisation, one that can speak for that France which has refused to collaborate. In September that man has already fled France for England: his name is Jean Moulin.

Sources

MAINMAST

TNA AIR20/8334, Encl. 92A
History of ‘RF’ Section, SOE: TNA HS7/123

Friday, 10 October 1941

The weather has improved enough for operations to be flown. With several nights already lost there is a considerable backlog. The following narrative demonstrates how the ‘press-on’ spirit (though never ‘press on regardless’) applies to these aircrews. They know the urgency of getting these agents to their destinations, but these cargoes are precious, and more valuable than they are: agents are not bombs to be just dumped when the circumstances dictate. If the weather is as described below, it gives an idea just how bad the previous nights must have been.

Operation MAINMAST

This trip of 11 hours 40 minutes is at the Whitley’s limit of endurance. Its duration is comparable with S/Ldr Keast’s effort to Poland the previous January, though Keast’s trip had been pioneering a new route eastwards, whereas this one flown by P/O Austin is over familiar territory. He crosses the French coast at Isigny, but cloud obscures the ground over France as far as Tours. They fly on dead-reckoning until the cloud clears and they are able to map-read to Toulouse, which they reach at half-past midnight. Austin circles Toulouse to get a good fix for setting course for the target, but although they see several lights in the target area, none fits the bill for a reception-party. They remain circling in the area, looking for the correct light-formation, but have to leave at about 1.15 without success. It’s a long way to come for no result.

Headed for home, they run into 10/10ths cloud almost immediately. They fly some 33° off-course for 15 minutes before Austin realises that he has not engaged the verge ring that physically locks the course into the compass. They cross the French coast at 4.48 but cannot identify precisely where. The wireless-operator picks up a homing beacon for Tangmere and Austin lands there shortly after six.

Operation PEAR

There is no SOE file on this operation, and no agent identified as PEAR, but F/O Hockey’s report tells us that the target was near Ménétréols. Hockey takes off much later, at 21.20, but his is a much shorter trip. He experiences much the same weather as Austin, but he takes a different approach, opting to fly rather low. East of Tours, he attempts to fly up the Cher river to Vierzon at about 2,000 feet beneath 9/10ths cloud, but as the river ascends the cloud descends. Hockey returns to Tours and has another go, this time at 500-600 feet, but has to flew up into the clag at St Julien. Undaunted, he retraces his course, picks up the river at Blère, just short of Tours, and tries again. This time he flies “just above the tree-tops along the river” (which must have been hair-raising for his crew in less-than-perfect visibility beneath cloud, at night; the moon is well past its full brilliance) and reaches Vierzon. He then flies to Neuvy, turns left to follow the Ménétréols road, and drops PEAR somewhere in between the two.

There are a few Ménétréols and Neuvys in the area. Most other SD operations in the area are south-east of Vierzon, but the Ménétréols and Neuvys in this area do not tally with Hockey’s account. The pair that do fit are located north-east of Vierzon: Neuvy-sur Barangeon and Ménétréol-sur-Sauldre.

Operation INTERALLIE, SUZANNE

INTERALLIÉ is the Polish agent Roman Garby-Czerniawski, working semi-independently in Paris for the Polish F2 organisation, based in the Non-Occupied Zone under Colonel Zembinski. SUZANNE is what Czerniawski calls a ‘radio station’: one or more W/T sets parachuted to a reception committee near the Loire, but intended users are not identified. Garby-Czerniawski is briefed on how to use the ‘A’ type parachute by his escorting officer, ‘Captain Philipson’.

Sgt Reimer and his crew take off at 20.55 and head for France via Abingdon and Tangmere. On crossing the French coast, they head for Angers on the Loire. (Reimer mis-spells it as Angiers.) This is their pinpoint for the run-in to SUZANNE. The 2nd Pilot, P/O Smith, map-reads to the target, where they are met by a triangle of lights and the letter ‘K’ flashed by the reception committee. Operation SUZANNE is completed successfully. Reimer’s report indicates that two packages were dropped, both canopies being seen to open.

Reimer then sets course south-east for Berthegon, the pinpoint for dropping INTERALLIÉ. Reimer encounters cloud at 700 feet, but they carry on. Reimer admits that Czerniawski is dropped about three miles north-west of the actual target. (In his memoir Czerniawski is less than complimentary about the navigator: three miles from the pinpoint may be nothing in the air, but on foot it’s a big deal.) Without any real idea where he is, Czerniawski is lost. Eventually he finds a signpost:

The signpost is a beauty; it has three arms showing in three directions! I read the names of the localities, slide down into the roadside,and with a torch covered by my mackintosh try to find my position. Minutes pass, and no trace of even a similar name! I try the alternative area discussed with Phillipson, some thirty miles north. Again no trace of the names. Moving helplessly my finger on the map, by coincidence I find one name, then the second, then the third — just between the two indicated areas . . . I don’t like swearing but i do it now and do it wholeheartedly. I dishonour the navigator’s family for several generations back into the past and forwards onto the future . . . that gives me a bit of relief.

Reimer and his crew head for home, landing at 3.35. After burying his parachute equipment, Czerniawski walks carefully in the moonlight, carrying his gramophone and stopping often to check he is not being followed. He reaches the edge of a small village and waits for the village to wake up. He risks asking a local about the next bus for Tours, and is told that he has half an hour to wait, time to enjoy an ersatz coffee. He reaches Paris the same afternoon.

Operation CORSICAN, TRIPOD, DIVINER, TRIPOD III, HICCUP

The CORSICAN mission consists of four ‘F’ section agents: CORSICAN (Jack Hayes), DIVINER (Daniel Turberville), and HICCUP (Jean le Harivel). Though TRIPOD appears – by deduction – to be 2/Lt Clément Marc Jumeau, a planter from the Seychelles, other TRIPOD operations have been container-drops. (In his SOE file Jumeau is frequently referred to as REPORTER, but REPORTER is his code-name for a later operation in 1943, not this one.) The codenames HICCUP and TRIPOD III are added in ink to Jackson’s report. TRIPOD III may refer to the two containers of weapons and sabotage materials.

F/Lt Jackson’s Whitley takes off at 18.12, and the French coast is reached two hours later, about 45 minutes after moonrise. Headed for Bergerac, the Whitley runs into thick layers of cloud: 10/10ths below 5,000 feet, and 9/10ths above 6,000. (Presumably they are flying between the layers to know this.) Heavy rain showers make matters worse. At 22.40 they incorrectly identify the town of Bergerac, on the Dordogne river, but return there after failing to see any identifiable lights at the target. (The pattern is a triangle of lights, two white and one red.) They then fly 40 miles south to Aiguillon (Jackson writes it up as ‘Augillon’), a pinpoint at the junction of the Lot and Garonne rivers, to verify their position. They return to identify Bergerac, this time correctly. Nine minutes later, at 23.50, they identify the target. The reception committee (Jean Pierre-Bloch, Edouard Dupuy and Albert Rigoulet) are near a cross-roads called Lagudal, in the commune of Beleymas. Jackson’s report states that they drop all four agents, but French sources indicate that only three went down on this first pass.

Another run to drop the containers is abandoned, for the crew loses sight of the lights, but the lights are seen again at 11.03 after circling the target area, and the containers are dropped three minutes later. However, Turberville is dropped with the two containers some 10 km north of the reception committee, and is completely isolated from the others. The Whitley then returns to England, experiencing similar poor weather across France.

There seems to have been two causes of the error: first, that the red light could be seen from only one direction, and in the absence of blackout the other two white ones didn’t stand out on their own; second, at low level the lights could easily be obscured by the area’s undulating hills, dotted with woods, as the Whitley circled the area. One wonders what lights the crew saw just before they dropped the containers and Turberville.

All this effort is in vain. Turberville is arrested the next morning by the Gendarmerie, and the containers are found a little later. The others don’t stay free for long, but their capture is due to other factors. Gilbert Turck has rented a ‘safe house’ in Marseilles called the Villa des Bois. London has given this address to the CORSICAN agents, including Turberville, and thus to the Vichy police, who lay a trap and net, in rapid succession, Clément Jumeau, Jean Pierre-Bloch, Jack Hayes and Georges Bégué. They are incarcerated until the summer of 1942, when they all escape in a mass breakout engineered by Bégué and resourced by Pierre-Bloch’s gallant wife Denise.

In December 1941 Turberville jumps from the train as he is being transferred to Lyon, and is hidden for over a year by farmers in a village near Roanne. He makes his way to England via the Pyrenees and Spain, and reaches England in April 1943.

Lieutenant Jumeau, commissioned into the Intelligence Corps, is promoted to Captain shortly before he leaves on another mission on 12 April 1943, now codenamed as REPORTER and destined for the Lyon area. The Halifax delivering him crashes at Douvres-la-Délivrande, north of Caen. Jumeau and another agent, Lt Louis Lee-Graham (SURGEON), a Durham Light Infantryman, survive the crash but are captured almost immediately in civilian clothes. To protect Jumeau’s relatives in France, Lee-Graham loans him part of his name, so Jumeau becomes Captain Mark Graham and Lee-Graham becomes Captain Louis Lee.

They are taken to Germany for interrogation and are imprisoned in a civilian prison in Frankfurt under terrible conditions of solitary confinement. Jumeau contracts tuberculosis, and Lee-Graham also becomes seriously ill. In March 1944 they are force-marched to the military prison at Torgau. After a short spell in a prison hospital without treatment Jumeau dies on 26 March 1944. Lee-Graham survives.

Saturday, 4 October 1941

RAF Newmarket

Three 138 Sqn aircraft are slated for operations tonight, but at 1505 the Bomber Command SASO (Senior Air Staff Officer) states that if Newmarket operates tonight all aircraft must be back by 20.00. The reason appears to be that fog is forecast to close almost all airfields in the UK. W/Cdr Knowles has learned that Squires Gate and Sealand are forecast to remain open, but he will await the 1700 Met report before making a final decision.

At 16.55 all Bomber Command  operations are cancelled.  Initially 138 Sqn appears to be exempt, and at 1700 138 Sqn confirms that its operations are ‘on’, but at 17.55, after a telephone discussion with the SASO, W/Cdr Knowles cancels all 138 Sqn operations. Group informs Tangmere and Abingdon that they can stand down.

No operations are flown for the next week, until the 10th, due to poor weather. Knowles makes reference to this in his summary which accompanies the moon-period’s reports.

Sources

Stradishall Operations Officers’ log, TNA AIR14/2528