Tag Archives: J. B. Austin

F/Lt John Austin

Tuesday, 2 September 1941

Operations had been scheduled for Monday 1 September, but these had been cancelled at 1430 hours. There is no explanation in the Stradishall log, but from the foul weather experienced the following night, that is a likely explanation. No Stradishall-based bombers are out either.

At 1115 on the 2nd, W/Cdr Knowles informs the Ops room that 138 Squadron will be operating four aircraft tonight. At 1130 W/Cdr Knowles is to be reminded that he has not informed the Station Commander of 138 Squadron’s upcoming operations. This is a requirement stretching back to October 1940.

Operation PORTER

Little is known about this operation to Belgium, except that two agents were dropped near Virton, after Austin had pinpointed on Bruges. My father’s logbook and Austin’s shows that take-off in Whitley Z7628 was at 20:40, and they returned 6 hours 10 minutes later. Five of these hours were spent in cloud, so weather is likely to have been a factor in the previous night’s cancellations. I have been unable to find any reference to the operation-name, so presume it was for SIS. The agents’ parachutes were seen to open, but they weren’t seen on the ground once they had landed.

On the return leg Austin takes pity on their pigeons, and they are not dropped into the filthy weather to walk home. (Austin called it ‘unfavourable’.)

Update 2 February 2026

Pierre Tillet has recently provided a part-solution to this operation by asking me if I knew the crew who dropped 22-year-old agent Camille Naisse on 3 September 1941. This information had come from a recent book (Dec. 2025) ‘La Guerre Sécrète des agents parachutistes belges‘ by Marchand, Maréchal and Verstraeten. After a bit of digging, I realised that it was this operation, which the RAF dated to 2 September, though the agents were dropped in the early hours of the 3rd.

According to this new book, Naisse and another agent were dropped near Montmédy, about 8 miles (13km) WSW from Virton, and crucially in France, not Belgium. His mission was to establish radio contact between Britain and Luxembourg.

Naisse was soon hunted by the SIPO-SD, and in December 1941 he fled to Switzerland, returning to Belgium after the Liberation. There is no information available about his fellow-agent.

Operation ADJUDICATE

This is Count Dzieřgowski’s lucky night, for he ends on the ground, in France. The Whitley takes off at 2000, course is set for Abingdon and Tangmere, but at 21.07 the coast is crossed near Selsey Bill in poor visibility at about 3,000 ft.

They cross the French coast at Grandcamp, after climbing to about 5,000 feet to avoid any light flak that might get a lucky hit through the 10/10th cloud beneath the Whitley. By the time they reach the Loire the cloud has thinned, and they follow the river downstream to Saumur. (This is a more logical course of action than flying upstream hoping to find Tours.) They then set course for Limoges. They could have followed the Vienne river all the way there, but it’s more likely they rely on accurate straight-line navigation and course-flying; Limoges is large enough and well-lit to be seen from some distance. They reach there just after midnight.

Jackson’s report indicates that they have flown a direct course from Limoges to the target. This doesn’t work, for although they see several flashing lights – a regular bugbear for crews trying to find reception-parties in the Unoccupied Zone – but none are for them. Jackson retraces his course to Limoges, and this time he flies up the Vienne, first north-east, then south-east after the river forks at Saint-Priest-Taurion. The target is close to the village of Saint Léonard-de-Noblat, close to where the SIS agent ‘Lt Cartwright’ (Michel Coulomb) had been dropped on 7 May. The de Vomécourt estate of Bassoleil is only four kilometres away, but this is a Polish Intelligence operation, and most unlikely to have involved the de Vomécourts.

This time the crew sees the triangle of lights and the prearranged flashed signal-letter ‘D’, which disproves Professor Foot assertion that Dzieřgowski was dropped ‘blind’. He is dropped at 01.37 from 800 feet.

They return to Limoges to get a firm ‘fix’ before setting course for the coast. On the return leg visibility is poor, and when they reach the French coast at 02.27 on ETA it is invisible beneath them. They return via Tangmere and Abingdon, and touch down at Newmarket at 04.13.

Operation GLASSHOUSE

Albert Homburg, and Cornelius Sporre his wireless operator, are being sent to Holland by R.V. Laming, head of ‘N’ Section, SOE. Several attempts have been made during the summer to land agents on the Dutch and Frisian islands by small boat, but they have all failed. This pair are the first Dutch section SOE agents to be inserted by parachute. M.R.D. Foot says they were dropped near Utrecht, but the pilots’ reports for both attempts make it clear that the target was east of the Ijsselmeer. (Squadron reports still referred to the Ijsselmeer as the Zuider Zee.)

W/Cdr Knowles and his crew take off at 20.15. Their course is via Cromer and the island of Terschelling, then over the Zuider Zee. (Knowles reports that they pinpointed over the Zuider Zee, which is somewhat imprecise.) The eastern side is covered by 10/10ths fog, which makes it impossible to find the target, so they abandon the attempt. The Whitley is illuminated by searchlights and fired on as they pass over Den Helder; they then set course for Cromer. Twenty miles out from Cromer, as the Whitley overflies a British coastal convoy the Royal Navy upholds its tradition of firing at anything within range: in his report Knowles drily notes that ‘it was observed that we were by no means welcome’, thus putting the passive tense approved by the Air Ministry for official reports to effective use.

W/Cdr Knowles’s previous boss from his days at the Air Ministry, Group Captain Bradbury, DFC, is along on this sortie for the experience. In one way this is sound practice, to ensure that staff officers understood the nature of the tasks they were commissioning, but allowing Bradbury over enemy territory is highly risky for SIS and SOE security: had Bradbury been captured and his role discovered, his knowledge of SIS and SOE activities would have compromised much of Britain’s clandestine activity.

Sunday, 31 August 1941

Operation ‘Smoking Concert’

August 31st is the 61st birthday of Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. She had been evacuated from Holland with her family in May 1940, even as German tanks were rolling through the neutral Low Countries. Now she is in exile in London with her country’s elected government. To demonstrate her support for the Dutch people in their privations she has commissioned a supply of cigarettes, filled with the aromatic tobacco from the Dutch East Indies, to be dropped over Holland on the night of her birthday.

On 10 August 1941, Group Captain Bradbury writes from the Air Ministry to W/Cdr Knowles, asking him to earmark three aircraft to drop large quantities of cigarettes over the Netherlands on the night of August 31st. Bradbury doesn’t say where the request has come from, but the operation has clearly been under planning for some time. The paper packaging for these loose-pack cigarettes has been specially designed: it carries patriotic emblems of the monarch and a free Holland. The double-V – for ‘Wilhelmina’ – beneath the Dutch royal crown has been printed on orange paper that is also covered with lines of small white ‘V’s (for victory). On each spine is printed: ‘ORANJE ZAL OVERWINNEN’ (Orange shall overcome.). On the reverse of each pack is a large white ‘V’, over printed with ‘Nederland zal herrijzen!’ (The Netherlands shall arise!).

For some reason 138 Squadron is able to provide only two serviceable Whitleys with their crews. At 0933 S/Ldr Stevens, of 3 Group, reports to the Stradishall Ops Room that: ‘3 Group Training Flight is loaning their aircraft “K” for a Nickel Raid tonight.’

One of the Whitley pilots is John Austin, who has returned from spending his leave at an OCTU (Officer Cadet Training Unit), and is now Pilot Officer Austin. This is his first sortie since receiving his commission; he will end the year as a Flight Lieutenant. The pilot of the other Whitley, according to Ken Merrick, is F/Lt Murphy. The pilot of the Training Flight’s Wellington is F/Lt McGillivray, a New Zealander. His second-pilot is Sqn/Ldr Charles Pickard, DSO, DFC. Pickard is being rested after his tour of operations with No. 9 Squadron, and is attached to 3 Group’s Training Flight.

At 2030 a/c ‘Z’ of 138 Squadron takes off from Newmarket, followed a minute later by ‘D’, and at 2055 McGillivray and Pickard in Wellington ‘K’. I have found an intriguing photograph in the Royal Air Force Museum catalogue that includes Pickard and McGillivray, together with S/Ldr M.T Stephens, 3 Group Gunnery Officer, and S/Ldr Alan Cousens, 3 Group Navigation Officer. The catalogue entry states: “Group photograph of late Sqn Ldr M.T. Stephens DFC and other scratch crew members beside Vickers Wellington “K”, circa 1941.” The group stands in front of the rear starboard fuselage of a Wellington, letter ‘K’. Behind them, near the Wellington’s rear door, lie several large cardboard boxes, some opened.

The Wellington was back in just over three hours, at 2356. Whitley ‘D’ landed five minutes later. Whitley ‘Z’ returned at 0208, after 5 hours 38 minutes in the air. This tallies with Austin’s logbook; his W/Op recorded the target as Leeuwarden. Though not that much further than the other two target areas quoted by Grp Capt. Bradbury – about 50 miles East of Utrecht and to the East of the Zuider Zee, – Austin is likely to have taken significant detours to avoid the worst of the flak-belt. Tonight the defences were bound to be alert and active: Stradishall’s resident bomber squadron had been scheduled to attack ‘Whitebait’ (Berlin), but during the day the target was changed to Cologne.

At 0230 F/O Hockey, probably Duty Officer for the night, signalled the Air Ministry: ‘Operation SMOKING CONCERT completed’.

Between August and October 1941 S/Ldrs Pickard, Stephens and Cousens, plus F/Sgts Broadley and Judson (Pickard’s Navigator and W/Op respectively from Nos 311 and 9 Squadrons) appear to have been based at 3 Grp HQ at Exning, less than two miles from RAF Newmarket Heath, as a rest from operations. On several occasions during this period all five are to be found in the crew lists of 138 Squadron operations, moonlighting both literally and metaphorically. Of the five, only Leo Judson survived the war: Stephens was to perish in the North Sea in January 1942 (information from an article in the December 2008 edition of ‘Nightjar’, the 214 Sqn Association newsletter); W/Cdr Cousens was to perish in April 1944 as a Master Bomber with No. 635 Squadron, PFF, during a raid on Laon, France; and Pickard and Broadley died in the Amiens prison raid in February 1944.

Tuesday, 12 August 1941

Operation PERIWIG/MILL

This second attempt to drop the MILL team is combined with PERIWIG. Why hasn’t this been done in the first place? The previous attempts to complete PERIWIG and MILL have been in two aircraft on the same night, though the targets are only 70 miles apart. Perhaps it is because SIS takes a dim view of sharing air resources with SOE. It has a valid point: SOE’s overt intentions of creating havoc through acts of sabotage and assassination render its agents more likely to get caught. Intelligence agents, often under deep cover, are vulnerable to accidental recognition.

But the 12th is the last opportunity to complete outstanding operations before the end of the moon period. Each service will have provided an accompanying/escorting officer, who will not have been unaware of the situation. Perhaps it is a case of Knowles stating in his characteristically blunt manner to both parties something to the effect of: “There’s one aeroplane for Belgium tonight; if your agent’s on board we’ll try and drop him, otherwise that’s your lot until the end of the month.” That night Ron Hockey is flying SHE to the Dordogne, and Sgt Reimer is taking four separate operations to central France, so even if there were a reserve Whitley there isn’t a reserve crew. (Though W/Cdr Knowles dates two reports to the 12th, he has flown them earlier; he just doesn’t provide the date they are flown.)

PERIWIG is dropped first, Austin pinpointing at Ath before dropping Campion near Silly. They then fly south to Trélon, identifiable by its large surrounding forest, just over the border in France. They pinpoint again at Chimay before dropping the two MILL agents about a mile south of Salles. This target is less than four miles from Momignies, the site of the Leenaerts operation almost exactly a year before. (Verhoeyen records that they were in fact dropped near Cerfontaine, about 11 miles to the north-east.) The rear Gunner sees the two parachutes open, and the canopies are seen on the ground as Austin flies another circuit of the area. It is a night of good weather, with good visibility. On the return leg they are coned by about 20 searchlights as they crossed the coast, probably at Nieuwport. (The typed report has been hole-punched through the name.)

The folly of combining operations is demonstrated by Campion’s capture. Campion proceeds to denounce almost everyone he knows. According to MRD Foot, ‘his brother, his sister-in-law, his nieces, the doctor who had set his ankle’ – he had, unseen by the departing Whitley’s crew, broken it severely on landing – ‘the mother superior of the convent [that had sheltered him], everyone he had met during his training and all the reception committee.’ Sgt Austin’s despatchers – there are two on this sortie, one under training – are most likely instructed to keep the SIS and SOE parties apart, both before embarkation and in the confined space of the Whitley’s rear fuselage. Whatever strategem is used, it appears to work: the MILL party escapes the attentions of the Gestapo, providing an almost constant stream of intelligence material back to London right up to the Liberation. According to Debruyne, MILL is particularly effective at railway-based intelligence, concentrating their efforts in the Hainaut area. Some 700 agents and helpers are involved.

Operation LUMOND, ADJUDICATE, FABULOUS, CHICKEN

This is the first sortie as aircraft captain for Sergeant Alvin Reimer, a Canadian pilot. His reports are concise, and give little away. This night is the last opportunity to complete outstanding operations before the end of the early August moon period, and Sgt Reimer’s record shows that he is the sort to press on and complete his task if it is feasible. The attempt to mount the operations on this sortie, all for SOE, is decided only at the last minute.

Take-off is slightly delayed, therefore, and the Whitley’s rear fuselage is full. There are four agents, four W/T sets, and a single despatcher. ADJUDICATE is scheduled first, to drop Count Dzieřgowski and a W/T set near Limoges. CHICKEN is the Belgian agent Octave Fabri, whose mission is to sabotage an aircraft-engine factory near Antwerp, but the cultural antipathies that still plague Belgium may have ruled out a more direct drop into the Ardennes. He is to be dropped about ten kilometres north of Châteauroux. Finally, FABULOUS and LUMOND are to be dropped about ten kilometres further north. FABULOUS was ‘one man with a large W/T set’ to be dropped for Henri Labit and a new circuit he was trying to set up after the failure of TORTURE. LUMOND was ‘one man with a W/T set, and one large W/T set as a separate package’, but no more is known about this SOE operation.

Reimer and his crew take off at 21.30 and fly via Tangmere to Caen, crossing the French coast at 23.24. They arrive over Limoges an hour and a half later, but low cloud prevents them finding the pinpoint for ADJUDICATE. They set course northwards and drop CHICKEN. Fabri makes his way to Belgium after making a series of beginners’ mistakes that no-one harmful picked up, and he survives the war after a catalogue of misfortunes which would have done away with a less lucky man.

The Whitley then carries on towards its next target, about 10 kilometres further north, arriving about ten minutes later, which indicates that Reimer has tried to give his rear team time to prepare. But Sgt Moy, although an experienced despatcher, has had to rearrange and prepare FABULOUS (a wireless-operator and set for Henri Labit) and LUMOND (a wireless operator and two sets) in a cramped fuselage still encumbered with Count Dzieřgowski and his W/T set. Over the FABULOUS/LUMOND target Reimer assumes that his despatcher was ready, and presses the green light, but the two agents and their three sets are still not ready. Reimer is forced to make a circuit of the target, and the crew lose sight of it in the cloud. After this one circuit Reimer is forced to abandon the drop in order to be clear of the French coast before daybreak.

We have this information about the drop because on 14 August SOE writes to the Air Ministry for an explanation. Three days later Group Captain Bradbury passes SOE’s note to W/Cdr Knowles at Newmarket, demanding: ‘Please render your report without delay and return the attachment.’ Knowles’s explanation is not on file, so we have only one side of the story.

Operation SHE

Two nights after Jackson’s attempt at SHE, F/O Hockey flew his first operation as skipper. Hockey now skippers the second attempt at SHE. This is the only operational sortie he flies with his great friend ‘Sticky’ Murphy as his Second Pilot.

They set off shortly after nine p.m. and follow much the same route as Jackson. They make landfall at Grandcamp, a little further west along the Normandy coast. They cross the Loire at Saumur, and reach Périgueux at 00.50. Low and medium cloud have given way to clear weather with a slight haze, and Hockey drops to about 1,500 feet. At 00.58 they identify the target, and 15 minutes later they have completed the operation.

Hockey and his crew make their way to the Atlantic coast, pinpointing at Bigenos in Archachon Bay. Despite the cloud cover over the Bay of Biscay two ships fire at them. They make landfall in West Cornwall, and pass over St Eval before heading for Abingdon and Newmarket. The weather is reportedly poor at Newmarket, and they are now so short of fuel that they land at Abingdon.

Operation SHE isn’t a female agent, or even an agent: it is a W/T set for the ALLIANCE intelligence circuit run by Marie-Madeleine Fourcade. Each W/T set has a three-letter identifying code, such as KVL or OCK. In this case the set has the code ‘SHE’.

This ‘SHE’ set plays an ignominious role in the story of ALLIANCE, for instead of taking it to Brittany to operate with the local ALLIANCE cell, the traitorous agent Bradley Davis, nicknamed ‘Bla’, gives his escort the slip and takes it to the Abwehr in Paris. From there Davis and the Abwehr run a ‘funkspiel’ deception operation using SHE, purporting to pass vital military information about the Atlantic ports to London. Davis operates the set himself to prevent London from suspecting a strange Abwehr hand on the key.

‘Bla’ has been under a degree of suspicion almost from his arrival in France, but London backs him, citing the excellent information they have been receiving. Within ALLIANCE he is known to be a traitor after his network in Brittany is arrested. London confirms this because they have continued to receive information purporting to come from the blown network via SHE. Davis turns up in Marseilles, is trapped in a faked rendezvous, and is executed by the ALLIANCE team.

Wednesday, 6 August 1941

Operation THEOREM/VALIANT

From the point of view of John Austin’s crew this was a smooth, uneventful and successful operation to drop a pair of agents. The journey out is via Dives-sur-Mer, Tours, Chateauroux and Montluçon. The agents are dropped at 01.54, three minutes after reaching the target, near the village of St. Désiré, north of Montluçon. Austin probably pinpointed on Montluçon before backtracking to the target. On the way back COLUMBA pigeons are dropped near Argentan, and Austin lands back at Newmarket at 05.55. One pigeon returns from Flers, a few miles west from Argentan, arriving in the UK on the 16th.

For one of the agents it is a different story: although Jacques de Vaillant Guelis (VALIANT) a senior ‘F’ Section officer, lands without difficulty and is recovered by Lysander on the night of 4 September (Operation ‘Night Embarkation’ as the pilot, S/Ldr John Nesbitt-Dufort, entitles his report), but Gilbert Turck (THEOREM) is knocked out in an awkward landing. He wakes to find himself in a Vichy police station in Montluçon. During the Phoney War he had been a liaison officer between the sabotage-oriented Section ‘D’ of SIS and the similarly-tasked 5ème Bureau; his old boss, now working for Vichy’s intelligence service, has him released. Turck regains contact with de Guelis, and starts his mission.

(Operation ADJUDICATE)

Knowles and his crew take off at 22.07, quite late for a sortie heading for the south of France at that time of year. The rear gunner is a Squadron Leader Stephens, a gunnery instructor from 3 Group’s HQ Flight.

They fly a near-regular route: Abingdon, Tangmere, near-Cabourg, then Tours to Limoges, which they reach at 1.34. They find the target without difficulty, but they are greeted by the signal code ‘MD’, meaning that to land the agent would be dangerous. They circle for about ten minutes, but no further signals are seen. Headlights are seen on the ground and the Whitley leaves the area. Knowles offers to drop the agent elsewhere in Unoccupied France, an offer declined.

They fly back via Tours, landing back at Newmarket at 05.52.

The reason the operation name and agent are in brackets is that the evidence to identify them is circumstantial. In his operations report Knowles incorrectly ascribes it to the FELIX network, which did not operate in that area of south-west France. (Three nights earlier Knowles and his crew had flown an attempt to drop a W/T set to FELIX near Fontainebleau, but had turned back early with engine-trouble.) Characteristically Knowles does not include the date of the sortie in his report, but the take-off and landing times match those recorded in the Stradishall log for an otherwise unascribed sortie by Whitley (letter ‘D’) on 6th August. The target description in Knowles’s report, and the fact that the cargo is an agent not a W/T set, points towards another attempt to insert Count Dzieřgowski into the Unoccupied Zone near Limoges.

Operational cross-country

This Lysander sortie appears in Nesbitt-Dufort’s logbook, with a take-off from Tangmere at 23:00 hrs, and landing 5 hours 40 minutes later.

For all his other operational sorties, Nesbitt-Dufort records them as either ‘Ops as ordered successful or ‘Ops as ordered unsuccessful, and notes the number of passengers. This one is recorded merely as ‘Ops as ordered’, and as a solo effort, with no passengers.

This looks like a similar operation to the one described by Hugh Verity as an ‘operational cross-country’, in which Verity, soon after he joined 161 Squadron, was ordered to fly to a point in France, note what he saw, and to fly back and report. In Verity’s case the target was a brightly-lit prison camp in the countryside south of Saumur. Such sorties provided a realistic test of the pilot’s solo navigational abilities without exposing a valuable agent to any risk. Nesbitt-Dufort has flown several Whitley operations, and has proved himself as a competent map-reader, but those sorties are rather different from flying alone to a pinpoint on the map, several hundred miles into Occupied France. Next time he will do it with an agent aboard.

Sources

THEOREM/VALIANT

TNA AIR 20/8334, encl.53A

(ADJUDICATE)

TNA AIR 20/8334, encl.49A

Op X-country

Logbook, John Nesbitt-Dufort.

Saturday, 12 July 1941

Operation FELIX

This is the first trip for Sgt Austin’s crew after navigator David Halcro has received his commission with effect from 3 July, though Austin’s operations on the 6 and 7 July still list him as ‘Sgt Halcro’. Though the target is south-east of Paris they chose to enter France by the usual route over Cabourg/Dives-sur-Mer. It is a cloudy and thundery night, but the weather clears as they approach the target area.

Austin has been given the wrong target location. During Austin’s 50-minute search for the target, red lights attached to the nearby wireless masts at Videlles are switched on whenever the Whitley flies close. These masts are close to Barbizon, on the west side of Fontainebleau Forest. Barbizon had been the original target for dropping Philip Schneidau in January, but by the time Schneidau dropped in March it had been switched back to Montigny.

Austin claims to have found the pinpoint after searching for 50 minutes. He circles for a further ten, but sees no lights that can be construed as the prearranged signal. Hardly surprising: the reception party has been waiting for the drop more than a dozen miles away Someone has cocked up, a sortie has been wasted and lives risked.

Two unidentified operations

F/O Hockey flies his first operation as skipper. The sortie is recorded in Ron Hockey’s logbook, and is mentioned in the Stradishall Ops Officers’s log, but if Hockey wrote an operations report it is not on file. There is no mention of the operation name.

Hockey takes off at 22.35 but an hour later reports engine trouble. The Whitley lands successfully back at Newmarket at 23.48; Hockey records spending 1 hr 25 mins airborne. This was the same Whitley ‘D’ that had caused Knowles’s early return on the 10th, but Knowles used the same aircraft the next night. This time it had been the port airscrew’s exactor which had failed. Perhaps Knowles had been fortunate in that UPROAR was taken ill while airborne, and the sortie had had to be abandoned.

F/Lt Jackson plans to take off at 23.30 on another operation, also unidentified, in Whitley ‘A’ according to the Stradishall log. It has already been delayed by 45 minutes, but at 23.08 the operation is cancelled by the Air Ministry.