Category Archives: Operations

Wednesday, 16 April 1941

Operation BENJAMIN – Austrian Tyrol

After S/Ldr Knowles made an abortive attempt in March to complete this operation, he had planned for it to be flown on 4 April. But 1419 Flight appears not to have flown it on any other night. By now the nightly period of darkness has shrunk to about 8½ hours. Difficult in March, it is now impossible for a Whitley to be flown to Czechoslovakia and back without still being over Occupied Europe at daybreak.

According to Czech sources Otmar Riedl is parachuted on the 16-17 April 1941. But he is dropped nowhere near Czechoslovakia: instead Riedl is dropped 286 miles (460km) short of the target, near Landeck in the Austrian Tyrol.

From the official sources there is nothing: no record of an operational flight, no operational report, no entry in an aircrew log-book. Nor is there any related correspondence in Air Ministry or Bomber Command files. Nothing in the Stradishall Ops Officers’ log or the Watch Office log hints at any clandestine operation being flown that night, though normal bombing sorties by 214 Squadron are carried out. Riedl may have been flown there by another RAF unit, but no candidate unit has so far been identified. Surely no-one would have deliberately dropped Riedl over the Tyrol knowing the target was in Bohemia. Even the dimmest navigator could not have mistaken the Austrian Tyrol for one of the flatter parts of Bohemia. Nor is the Austrian Tyrol on any plausible route to the target.

It is possible that the pilot and crew may have been briefed with a deliberately incorrect target. By mid-March the Austrian Tyrol is about the furthest possible distance that would have allowed a Whitley or Hudson to return before daylight. One unit which had flown the earliest SD operations is the Parachute Training Squadron at Ringway. Stradishall records Knowles flying to Ringway and back on the 16th, but Ringway’s ORB has no record of an aircraft flying an operation on this night. Whoever carried it out, from whatever unit and from which airfield (for Riedl must have got there somehow), it is perhaps not surprising that no record exists. It strikes me as being an deliberate action to avoid an impossible situation: to deliver an agent to eastern Europe without making the sortie a one-way trip for the aircraft and crew involved. One possibility is that Knowles flew to Ringway, borrowed a crew sworn to secrecy, and flew the operation himself.

In ‘Gubbins and SOE’, Peter Wilkinson states that the agent ‘succeeded in reaching Prague and came on the air’. The facts are otherwise. Otmar Riedl is arrested shortly after landing in the snow, but he succeeds in hiding his equipment. He manages to convince the Austrian authorities that he has crossed the border to escape from the German invasion of Yugoslavia. Vouched-for by his pre-war employer in Yugoslavia, the Czech footwear company Bata, he serves a two-month sentence in Innsbruck for illegal border-crossing before returning to Czechoslovakia. He attempts to make contact with the Czech resistance, but is rebuffed. He works for Bata until 1945. On making contact with the Allies, he learns that he has been assumed to have died.

Thursday, 10 April 1941

Operation JOSEPHINE

The Pessac power station supplies electrical power to the Bordeaux area, which hosts a submarine base built for the Italian Navy known as ‘BETASOM’, from which its submarines will account for more than half a million tons of Allied shipping. Damaging the power station would cripple both base and local industry: the Bloch aircraft company and Ford France have factories in the area. Bomber Command has attacked Bordeaux several times in 1940 and 1941. The local airfield at Merignac, home to Condor long-range bombers that another menace to the Atlantic convoys, would also be disrupted.

Six Polish Army saboteurs are selected for the operation. Though they might seem an odd choice, a considerable portion of the Polish Army had escaped to France during the ‘Phoney War’ of 1939-40, and during the collapse General Sikorski had established his headquarters at Libourne, 25 km to the east. The presence of Poles in that part of France is therefore not uncommon, even after the armistice, and many soldiers who have escaped to England with Sikorski know their way around the area. Explosives expertise cannot be acquired quickly, and at the time the Free French Forces do not have such experts to hand.

The Whitley, T4165, is one of the pair from the Tragino Aqueduct raid, Operation COLOSSUS. These aircraft had been prepared in haste for COLOSSUS at Ringway, and on that raid there had been several container hang-ups over the target; one, crucially, had held many of the explosive charges. On this night, however, the problem isn’t a hang-up but a falling-off: en route to the target, shortly before midnight, an electrical fault releases one of the containers. Without the limpet-mines it carries there is no point in continuing with the operation, and Oettle returns to Tangmere.

By the time the Whitley arrives over Tangmere at about 03.30 much of its fuel has been used up. On take-off the heavy fuel load has masked the effect of the saboteurs’ weight on the Whitley’s centre-of-gravity (C-of-G). Now that most of the fuel had been used up, the C-of-G has moved dangerously aft.

As the Whitley approaches the runway Oettle is too high, too slow. Even if he elects to go around this is a dangerous procedure in a Whitley: the Merlin X engines are underpowered and cannot be wound up quickly. Also, in the final stages of a normal landing there is little elevator control, for the tailplane falls into the turbulent wash behind the wings. The Whitley stalls, and crashes heavily.

Of F/Lt Oettle’s crew, Sergeants Cowan (Observer) and Morris (Rear Gunner) are killed. Jack Oettle is seriously injured, as are P/O Wilson (2nd Pilot) and Sgt Briscoe (Wireless Operator). The agents escape serious injury: the rear fuselage is an inherently safer place to be than the cockpit area, but their escape may also be due to the cushioning effect of their swaddling parachute gear, the sorbo-rubber floor-mats, and stacks of bundled propaganda leaflets. Stradishall does not list P/O Molesworth among the injured; he is probably the Despatcher, back in the rear fuselage with the Poles. Although most despatchers are airmen volunteers from the ground trades, it is not uncommon for an officer from Ringway to perform this role.

Tangmere is a busy Fighter airfield, and there are many witnesses to the accident. The several personnel seen emerging from the rear fuselage are bound to arouse comment. One of the witnesses is Jimmy McCairns, a fighter pilot at Tangmere, later a noted Lysander pilot with 161 Squadron: the fiction put out is that the six agents are newspaper correspondents returning from covering a raid. Thin cover, given the eastern-European accents of the ‘newspapermen’, but it has to do.

Tuesday 8 April 1941

Operation to Belgium

Flt Lt A.D. Jackson (believed to be Ashley Duke Jackson, 33261) flies his first operation with the Special Duties Flight. Jackson was remembered by his fellow-pilots as either South African or Rhodesian. Before coming to 1419 Flight he had been instructing on Whitleys at No. 10 OTU. By the end of 1940 Sqn Ldr Knowles, then at the Air Ministry in charge of planning 419 Flight’s operations, had become something of a nuisance at Abingdon, repeatedly tapping 10 OTU’s instructor-pool for experienced aircrew: first it had been Sergeants Bernard and Davies, both W/T instructors, then F/O Jack Oettle. In December he’d asked Air Commodore Archie Boyle, the Air Ministry’s Director of Intelligence, to use his influence to procure Jackson for 419 Flight. Even with Boyle’s efforts Jackson’s transfer didn’t take place until March.

Jackson’s operational report is undated, but the logbook of Group Captain Ron Hockey, who flew as Jackson’s Second Pilot on this operation, identifies the date of the sortie, their first with the Flight. Jackson’s crew includes a Sergeant Besant as Observer. Sgt Besant does not appear in any later operational reports, so he appears to have been posted out. The Whitley is P5029, repaired after its mishap at Sumburgh in February.

They take off from Stradishall, then set course for the Belgian coast at 21.16, climbing to 5,000 feet for the crossing. With cloud at 3,000 ft, they are unable to see the English coast to see whether they are on track. The wireless operator obtains a back bearing (QDM) from a radio beacon at Stradishall, which verifies that they are. They make landfall in clear weather at Knokke, but as they lose height to 2,000 feet the Whitley is picked up by searchlights and attacked by coastal flak batteries north-east of Zeebrugge, though their firing is wide. Sgt Bramley, the rear gunner, succeeds in putting one of the searchlights out. Jackson flies inland to somewhere he records as ‘AILTROE’, arriving at 22.23. There they alter course for ‘WATTEN’, flying slowly at a height of 1,500 feet, and the despatcher is instructed to ‘commence operations’.

Their flight-path takes them across the Franco-Belgian border to ‘WATTEN’. They return on an reciprocal course, crossing the border at ‘WARHOUDT’. They continue on the same course, passing over Bruges. During the whole exercise they fly over several aerodromes, but encounter no searchlight or flak opposition until they leave the coast for the North Sea, when they are engaged by three searchlights.

This operation does not tie in with any known agent; indeed, may have been a leaflet-dropping exercise, to give a new crew valuable experience and to test whether they could do the job later with a real agent. Jackson’s report on this operation is difficult to analyze because many of the locations his report mentions are difficult to identify: while ‘Knock’ can be identified as Knokke with certainty, ‘Ailtroe’ might be Aalter. Or it may not. ‘Watten’ could be the village in France near St Omer, the later site of the V-2 launching base. ‘Warhoudt’ is untraceable, at least by the author.

Update March 2018 – Operation Columba

The purpose of this sortie has now become clear: it was not pamphlets that the crew dropped in a line across the Franco-Belgian border, but pigeons. This sortie was the first operation in a programme to drop small packages over Nazi-occupied Europe. Each package contained a homing-pigeon, food and water (for the pigeon), rice-paper, a pencil and a tiny green container for a written message. Anyone finding one of these might provide British Intelligence with useful information about the occupiers, but for anyone caught with one of these pigeons the result would have been a death-sentence. Many of these containers were handed over to the authorities, but several brave individuals wrote messages and released the pigeon to return to England. Of those pigeons dropped this night, two made it back to England.

From the COLUMBA file in the National Archive, the Belgian place-names, once elusive, become clear. The end-point of the Whitley’s dropping-run is indeed the French village of Watten; later in the war a vast blockhouse to house a V-2 launching complex will be built in the woods nearby. The first pigeon to returned is sent from the Belgian village of Herzeele. By drawing a line from Watten through Herzeele, the two towns of AALTER and WORMHOUT are on the track.

Sources

TNA AIR 20/8334, encl. 5A.
Pilot’s logbook, Grp Capt. R.C. Hockey

Gordon Corera, ‘Secret Pigeon Service’, pp. 24, 37-8.
TNA AIR 20/8457 (Operation COLUMBA)

Tuesday, 8 April 1941

Operation to Belgium

Flt Lt A.D. Jackson (believed to be Ashley Duke Jackson, 33261) flies his first operation with the Special Duties Flight. Jackson was remembered by his fellow-pilots as either South African or Rhodesian. Before coming to 1419 Flight he had been instructing on Whitleys at No. 10 OTU. By the end of 1940 Sqn Ldr Knowles, then at the Air Ministry in charge of planning 419 Flight’s operations, had become something of a nuisance at Abingdon, repeatedly tapping 10 OTU’s instructor-pool for experienced aircrew: first it had been Sergeants Bernard and Davies, both W/T instructors, then F/O Jack Oettle. In December he’d asked Air Commodore Archie Boyle, the Air Ministry’s Director of Intelligence, to use his influence to procure Jackson for 419 Flight. Even with Boyle’s efforts Jackson’s transfer didn’t take place until March.

Jackson’s operational report is undated, but the logbook of Group Captain Ron Hockey, who flew as Jackson’s Second Pilot on this operation, identifies the date of the sortie, their first with the Flight. Jackson’s crew includes a Sergeant Besant as Observer. Sgt Besant does not appear in any later operational reports, so he appears to have been posted out. The Whitley is P5029, repaired after its mishap at Sumburgh in February.

They take off from Stradishall, then set course for the Belgian coast at 21.16, climbing to 5,000 feet for the crossing. With cloud at 3,000 ft, they are unable to see the English coast to see whether they are on track. The wireless operator obtains a back bearing (QDM) from a radio beacon at Stradishall, which verifies that they are. They make landfall in clear weather at Knokke, but as they lose height to 2,000 feet the Whitley is picked up by searchlights and attacked by coastal flak batteries north-east of Zeebrugge, though their firing is wide. Sgt Bramley, the rear gunner, succeeds in putting one of the searchlights out. Jackson flies inland to somewhere he records as ‘Ailtroe’, arriving at 22.23. There they alter course for ‘Watten’, flying slowly at a height of 1,500 feet, and the despatcher is instructed to ‘commence operations’.

Their flight-path takes them across the Franco-Belgian border to ‘Watten’. They return on an reciprocal course, crossing the border at ‘Warhoudt’. They continue on the same course, passing over Bruges. During the whole exercise they fly over several aerodromes, but encounter no searchlight or flak opposition until they leave the coast for the North Sea, when they are engaged by three searchlights.

This operation does not tie in with any known agent; indeed, may have been a leaflet-dropping exercise, to give a new crew valuable experience and to test whether they could do the job later with a real agent. Jackson’s report on this operation is difficult to analyze because many of the locations his report mentions are difficult to identify: while ‘Knock’ can be identified as Knokke with certainty, ‘Ailtroe’ might be Aalter. Or it may not. ‘Watten’ could be the village in France near St Omer, the later site of the V-2 launching base. ‘Warhoudt’ is untraceable, at least by the author.

Sources

TNA AIR 20/8334, encl. 5A.
Pilot’s logbook, Grp Capt. R.C. Hockey


Saturday, 15 March 1941

Operation SAVANNA

In the summer and autumn of 1940 the Luftwaffe started their attempts to use radio-direction technology to guide their bombers to targets in England. While coastal targets like London, Plymouth, Southampton and Belfast could be found on all but the darkest of nights, inland targets like Manchester and Birmingham were harder to find. By following a narrowly-directed radio-beam a specialist unit of the Luftwaffe, K.Gr.100, has been able to find these harder-to-find targets and set them alight them with incendiary bombs. The rank-and-file bomber squadrons have only to find these fires, visible from afar, and bomb them. Coventry in November 1940 was the first result.

British technology, the so-called ‘bending of the beams’ as described by Professor R. V. Jones, is one counter-strategy. Another approach is to eliminate the highly-trained crews of K.Gr.100. Their Heinkel bombers can be replaced; they can not.

Intelligence sources in Brittany have discovered that the crews travel by bus between Meucon airfield and their lodgings in Vannes, about five miles away. Operation SAVANNA is a plan to ambush this bus, a single recognisable target, between the base and the outskirts of Vannes, and kill the aircrews. SOE is not yet a going concern, and lacks trained personnel who can do the job and pass without notice in France. The British have been forced to approach de Gaulle’s Free French Forces, and a team of five has been recruited. No. 2 Group’s Blenheims are to attack Meucon airfield as a diversion for 419 Flight’s parachuting of the agents a few miles to the east.

The operation is carried out some three months after the attack had first been mooted. But in the meantime the Heinkel crews have settled in: they have acquired private cars cheaply from a population that can no longer use them. The assassination team disbands and the agents employ themselves in other intelligence and resistance activities before making their way back to the UK.

SAVANNA is an excellent example of an operation that could have worked had it been put into effect immediately. Whether it should have been attempted is a different matter: while this coup-de-main type of attack has become a standard component of insurgent warfare since 1945, its authorisation says a great deal about Britain’s desperate need to disable these pinpoint raids. The raid had been commissioned by the Air Ministry, but once the operation transmuted from planning-mode to execution, it was the RAF which prevaricated. The RAF had agreed to drop spies for SIS, and was reasonably comfortable with doing so — it could hardly refuse, given that it had done so in the previous war — but the RAF shared the other Services’ instinctive distaste for irregular forces. The RAF’s Chief of the Air Staff, Sir Charles Portal, wanted the men to be dropped in uniform, so that the killing, though repugnant, would at least be legitimate according to the articles of war. On 1 February he wrote to Sir Gladwyn Jebb of SOE:

I think that the dropping of men dressed in civilian clothes for the purpose of attempting to kill members of the opposing forces is not an operation with which the Royal Air Force should be associated. I think you will agree that there is a vast difference, in ethics, between the time-honoured operation of the dropping of a spy from the air and this entirely new scheme for dropping what one can only call assassins.

Previous posts show that Operation SAVANNA has been repeatedly postponed or cancelled since early February, not for operational reasons such as poor weather (as claimed by M.R.D. Foot in 1966), but by the Air Ministry. 419 Flight has carried out other arduous operations during the same period while SAVANNAH has repeatedly been postponed. No. 2 Group’s Blenheims have been ready to go from February, and so have the Free French agents: Capt. Georges Bergé, Sgt J. Forman, Joël le Tac, Lt Petit-Laurent, & Cpl Renault.

Stradishall Operations Officers’ Log, February – March 1941
Date Time From Context Actions
7/2/41 1015 Spoke to Squadron Leader Knowles re 419 Flight and Blenheim operations tonight. Squadron Leader Knowles states Ops cancelled for tonight. Advised:- Station Commander and W/Cdr Ommancy
8/2/41 1200 S/L Knowles Inform W/C Cameron of 107 Squadron. Savannah for tonight cancelled. Blenheims not operating. 3 Group informed and asked to notify 2 Group. W/C Cameron informed.
10/2/41 1110 S/Ldr Knowles Savannah cancelled for today 3 Group informed.
11/2/41 1025 S/L Knowles 1025 S/L Knowles: W/C Earl of Bandon of 2 Group to be informed that Savannah is ‘off’ tonight. Group informed & are passing message to 2 Group.
13/2/41 1035 S/L Knowles Savannah cancelled. Advised 3 Group.
14/2/41 0925 S/L Knowles 2 Group rang & W/C Bandon informed personally that “Savannah is off for tonight.”
15/2/41 0920 S/L Knowles Savannah is cancelled for tonight. Informed 3 Group to inform 2 Group.
16/2/41 1420 S/L Knowles Savannah cancelled for tonight. 3 Group asked to inform 2 Group.
17/2/41 1135 S/L Knowles Let W/C Earl of Bandon know that Savannah is temporarily suspended. Earl of Bandon informed.
3/3/41 1845 S/Ldr Knowles Telephoned No. 2 Group that Savannah will be on for Thursday.
6/3/41 1300 2 Group Savannah cancelled for tonight. will be considered to-morrow. 419 Flight informed.
7/3/41 1000 Group Savannah cancelled tonight
8/3/41 0950 2 Group Inform S/L Knowles that there will be a Met. conference upon operation ‘Savannah’ at 1115 hrs & will let him know then. S/L Knowles informed.
9/3/41 0945 3 Group Savannah cancelled. Advised 1419 Flight.
10/3/41 0935 2 Group Savannah cancelled owing to weather. S/L Knowles Informed
11/3/41 0945 3 Group Savannah cancelled for to-night. S/L Knowles informed.
12/3/41 1100 2 Group Savannah cancelled. S/Ldr Knowles advised.
12/3/41 1505 1419 Flight Ref. ‘Savannah’ any information coming from 2 Group to be given to ? Appleyard (an army officer) who will be in the mess 13/3/41. Informed Capt. Appleyard.
15/3/41 1035 S/L Knowles Savannah is ‘on’. A/c T4166 Whitley F/Lt Oettle. T4166 ‘X’ IFF fitted.
15/3/41 1306 S/L McMichael For W/C Bandon. Further information on Operation Savannah after lunch.
15/3/41 1655 Group A general fog an be expected in East Anglia. St Eval & Boscombe should be alright. Group will let us know later whether St Eval can accommodate all a/c returning – if not the effort may be reduced.
15/3/41 1805 S/L Knowles 1419 Flight has arranged to divert to St Eval.
15/3/41 1855 No. 2 Group S.A.S.O. No. 2 Group phoned a message for S/L Knowles. All is fixed & no snags as regards weather. Everything is being carried out according to plan. S/L Knowles informed. S/L Knowles informed.
16/3/41 0340 3 Group Whitley operation completely successful. Landed at St Eval. S/L Knowles informed.
16/3/41 1215 S/Ldr Knowles Requested through Group permission to land at St Eval after tonight’s operation. Group asked. St Eval replied O.K.


Data extracted from the Stradishall Operations Officers’ Log Book, TNA AIR 14/2527.