Category Archives: Operations

Thursday, 13 March, 1941

Unnamed Operation

F/Lt Jack Oettle flies a sortie in Whitley a/c ‘Z’, taking off from Stradishall at 18.54. He lands back at 02.15, and at 04.40 Oettle reports ‘1419 operations successful’. There is no other report of this sortie taking place.

In his memoirs as ‘Passy’, André Dewavrin records that on the night of 13-14 March ‘Le sergent aviateur Laroche, fut donc parachuté dans la nuit du 13 au 14 mars et rejoignit aussitôt Lucas.’  (‘Lucas’ was the Free French agent Pierre Fourcaud, who had returned to Vichy via Lisbon in mid-January.) Marie-Madeleine Fourcade writes in her book ‘L’Arche de Noë’ (‘Noah’s Ark’) that on 14 March she learned, through a phone call from Clermont-Ferrand, that her brother, Jacques Bridou, has been parachuted into France. Bridou has been dropped with Sgt Laroche from less than 100 metres (about 300 feet) above the ground. Their landing was bound to be hard, and Bridou has injured his foot. He has also become separated from Laroche.

The two agents would have been regarded as separate operations. In a letter brought by Fourcaud for Marie-Madeleine’s boss, Georges Loustaunau-Lacau, de Gaulle has typically made clear that ‘whoever is not with me, is against me’. The distinction is fine: Bridou is being delivered by SIS for SIS, Sgt Laroche by SIS for the Free French; hence Oettle’s use of the plural ‘operations’ in his report.

Sources

Stradishall Ops Officers’ log
‘L’Arche du Noë’, by Marie Madeleine Fourcade, p.57 (English translation ‘Noah’s Ark’, p.41)
‘Memoires’, by ‘Passy’ (André Dewavrin), p.165

Wednesday, 12 March 1941

Czechoslovakia: Operation BENJAMIN

S/Ldr Knowles pilots Z6473 in an attempt to drop the Czech agent Otmar Riedl about 50 km east of Prague, near the town of Kolin.

Sparse details for the sortie flown by S/Ldr Knowles come from the logbook of Sgt (later F/Sgt) Fisher, a Wireless Operator who has just joined the Flight. Fisher flies on several of 1419 Flight’s early operations as a member of S/Ldr Knowles’s crew; when Ken Merrick was doing his research for ‘Flights of the Forgotten’ he did have sight of Fisher’s logbook, and it gave Knowles’s target for this sortie as Czechoslovakia.

The sortie was to attempt Brigadier Gubbins’s SOE Operation BENJAMIN. This had been ‘bumped’ (to use modern airline parlance) on February 17th in favour of an SIS operation to Belgium. BENJAMIN is important, though clearly not to SIS: a Czech soldier, Otmar Riedl, had been trained to provide a W/T link, independent from Frantisek Moravec’s Intelligence organisation, between the Czech government-in-exile in London and other Czech resistance groups. Riedl was to be dropped in the Kolin district of central Bohemia, near the village of Křečhoř. This is a crucial operation for Gubbins: he has to show that his fledgling organisation is a serious outfit.

Delayed by a technical fault, S/Ldr Knowles and his crew take off late, at 20.09. They turn back shortly after passing Frankfurt, having calculated that they cannot make it to the target and return to friendly skies before daybreak. Fisher’s logbook and the Ops Officers’ log agree that the trip lasted 6 hours 10 minutes, the Whitley returning at 02.18 on the 13th.

France: Operations FITZROY & FELIX

The sortie is flown by F/Lt Oettle. His Whitley leaves the English coast over Selsey Bill and reaches Chateauroux, via Tours, at 0145. Eugène Pérot, a wireless operator for Claude Lamirault, is dropped about 5 kilometres south-west of Chateauroux. To disguise the aircraft’s purpose the crew drops three packages of ‘Nickels’ (propaganda leaflets) over Chateauroux before heading north-east at about 0235 towards the Fontainebleau area.

Schneidau is dropped just to the north of Montigny-sur-Loing. The crew reports that he’s made a successful landing, but a fresh breeze carries him into dense woods. He falls through the tree-tops, and crashes into tree-trunks well above the ground, and becomes entangled. The wireless set is suspended in the branches above his head. It takes several hours to cut himself and the W/T set free. The parachute canopy is high in the tree-tops, and he has to cut this rather obvious advertisement down before he can make his way off the plateau. He has been injured, first by the fall and then through his strenuous efforts to free himself and recover his equipment.

F/Lt Oettle and his crew returned to Stradishall via Fécamp and Tangmere, landing at about 0550.

Monday, 3 March 1941

Stradishall

S/Ldr Knowles advises that 419 Flight will be operating tonight, taking off at 1800 on a 10-hour sortie. From the duration this is most likely to be another attempt to deliver Operation BENJAMIN to Czechoslovakia.

At about 1600 Group is told that 419 Flight is operating tonight, taking off at 1900.

At 1725 the operation is cancelled.

At 1845 Knowles phones 2 Group that SAVANNA is ‘on’ for the 6th.

Wednesday, 26 February 1941

Stradishall

At 1746 Dishforth signals that a Whitley aircraft destined for 419 Flight will leave Dishforth for Stradishall at 1800. This is either T4165 or T4166, two of the Whitleys used on the Tragino Aqueduct raid in Italy. They are highly suitable for the Flight, for they have already been converted for parachuting, and both are equipped with four additional 66-gallon tanks.

Monday, 17 February 1941

Stradishall – Namur

Shortly before 6 p.m. Keast tells Ops that he is planning to take off at 0030; this will only be confirmed after he receives the weather forecast at 10.30. At 2346 he confirms that the operation is ‘on’. He plans to take off at 0100, and estimates his return for 0500, though with a possible diversion to Tangmere.

Keast and his crew takes off in Whitley ‘A’ (T4264) at 0115. F/O McMurdie is the 2nd Pilot, but Keast does his own navigation. The wireless-operator and Rear Gunner are Sgt Dai Davies and David Bernard; Bernard has acquired an experimental parachute-harness from Henlow. Also aboard, flying as ‘Front Gunner’ is F/O Baker, a Lysander pilot on loan from No. II(AC) Squadron. As on his previous sorties, his job is to learn the routes and pinpoints, as he may have to fly this way on his own.

Shortly after they drop the agent, Gaston Poplimon, near Namur, their Whitley is hit by flak, losing at least one engine. Still at low level, Keast has no option but to belly-land in a field by the Namur-Louvain road, near the hamlet of Cognolée. The aircraft lands so close to the road that the wings are only yards from the line of trees by the road-edge. Though unhurt, they cannot escape as they are too close to the village and the road. They are taken to Namur for interrogation. The Germans think Sgt Bernard is the agent due to his unconventional parachute-harness; he is given dental work he doesn’t need. The Germans find documents in the Whitley that link the crew with the trip to Poland two nights before.

At 0445 Knowles is told that the runway had been bombed, and that the returning aircraft would be diverted to Mildenhall. An hour later he is told that there has been no news of S/Ldr Keast.