The Air Ministry, London
The Flight Commander of No. 419 Flight is informed in London that the Flight will be asked to fly an operation on the following night, and is assured that the target is within the agreed operating radius of 750 miles.
Category Archives: Operations
Wednesday, 11 December 1940
RAF Stradishall
At 17.45, Stradishall reports to 3 Group that one aircraft is possibly going on operations tonight. At 23.40 Stradishall records Whitley T4264 (which Stradishall notes as a/c ‘X’) is airborne.
This is another attempt at the operations abandoned the night before, for it is recorded as ‘Luxembourg, Belgium’ and ‘Completed’. The flight time recorded in Keast’s logbook is 4 hours 25 minutes, which ties in with Stradishall’s reported landing time of 04.01.
No agent has been positively identified for this operation.
Tuesday, 10 December 1940
RAF Stradishall
At 10.12 one of 419 Flight’s Whitleys took off for Henlow, though the reason is not known.
An exchange between Stradishall and 3 Group shows that 419 Flight kept its cards close to the chest, so far as operations planning went: at 2045 No.3 Group phoned Stradishall to ask that information about 419 Flight’s proposed operations should be provided ‘at an earlier hour’. The Ops Officer replied that Stradishall didn’t know themselves until late. The Ops Officer was told to instruct the Officer Commanding 419 Flt that information about proposed operations must be passed on as soon as the Flight knew it.
Bomber Command raids on Germany operated to a very tight schedule. Within an overall bombing strategy the targets were chosen the morning of the operation. Orders were passed down to the stations and their squadrons, and by early afternoon the aircraft were being prepared and the crews briefed. 419 Flight was dependent on orders received from the Air Ministry, often delivered in person at Stradishall. As the Air Ministry was dependent on SIS and/or SOE providing the necessary information, which was rarely forthcoming until the afternoon, 419 Flight could provide only a provisional estimate until mid-afternoon, or even early evening, that they would be operating that night.
Oettle and Keast took off at 23.05 on an operation to ‘Luxembourg, Belgium’. The weather was poor, and they abandoned and returned, landing after four hours.
Wednesday, 20 November 1940
RAF Stradishall
Shortly after midnight (i.e. in the early morning of the 21st) Oettle and Keast take off in T4264 and complete an operation to ‘Brussels, Belgium’. The aircraft returns at 05.59 and Keast’s log reports the flight took 5 hours 40 minutes. According to several sources this operation coincides with the insertion of Emile Hingot, a wireless operator to assist Constant Martiny, dropped in October.
Tuesday, 19 November 1940
RAF Stradishall
At 19.20, information about a planned sortie is passed to 3 Group by phone. At 2300 Group is informed that a Whitley may take off at 23.15, but that a decision cannot be made due to the weather. At 23.20 Whitley ‘L’ takes off, and Group is informed.
According to a summary written in February 1941 the destination is Leiden, Holland. Keast’s logbook says that he and F/O Oettle fly a 4 hour, 45 minute operation in Whitley T4264. The Stradishall Ops Officer’s Log says that they land at 03.57.
The agent appears to have been Cornelius ‘Kees’ van Brink, a Dutchman who had been in Australia in 1939. He arrived in England at the end of July 1940. He was recruited by SIS and parachuted in November. Though the date given by Dutch sources is 18-19 November, there was no sortie on that night.
Van Brink was the second agent parachuted in to Holland. He was dropped near Kippenburg, about 15 Km west of the Tjeukemeer where Lodo van Hamel had been arrested the previous month. Finding that the contact addresses he had been given in London appeared to be under surveillance by the Germans, he made his way to Rotterdam. Though after sending several messages and apparently completing his task he wanted to return to the UK. He appears to have pre-arranged to be picked up by Heije Schaper, the Dutch Air Force pilot who had attempted to pick up van Hamel and only narrowly escaped. But London wanted van Brink to remain in place, possibly because of the previous debacle. Instead, he made his way to Marseille. From there he travelled via Spain, Portugal, Curaçao, the USA and Canada, and from thence to England, where he arrived on 18 September 1942. He was unusual: he had survived.
RAF Ringway
A fatal accident results from a failure of the strop hook, the end of a parachutist’s ‘static line’ attached to a frame inside the aircraft. The other end is attached to the bag containing the parachute canopy and lines. As the paratrooper leaves the aircraft his weight pulls the canopy and lines from the bag, leaving the bag streaming beneath the aircraft under the tail. If the hook becomes detached from the frame there is nothing to pull the parachute out. There was no reserve ‘chute, and no method for the parachutist to deploy the canopy manually. A strengthened strop is quickly developed and tested.
Sources
Dutch Wikipedia entry for Cornelis van Brink
RAF Ringway ORB