Tag Archives: J. B. Austin

F/Lt John Austin

Monday, 7 July 1941

Operation TRIPOD

Knowles took off in Whitley ‘D’ from Newmarket at 22.26, and flew a normal route to France via Abingdon, Tangmere and Cabourg. Five minutes after crossing the French coast a Heinkel III passed overhead at right angles to their course. Front and rear gunners opened fire, but the Heinkel did not waver, and flew on. The Whitley carried on towards Limoges. They crossed the Loire ten miles west of Tours, and at this point the intercom decided to pack up. This left Knowles without a means of direct communication with the crew-member in the bomb-aimer’s position (whoever that was) responsible for dropping the containers.

The circumstances of this operation appear to fit the first drop of containers to an SOE circuit. In ‘Who Lived to See the Day’ (1961), Philippe de Vomécourt claimed that a container was dropped onto his estate at Bas Soleil, east of Limoges, on the night of 13th June 1941. In 1966 MRD Foot, taking de Vomécourt’s date as gospel, cited the Stradishall log in evidence that Sgt Austin had been the pilot. The problem with this was that Austin had been over Brittany that night, trying to parachute Norman Burley and Ernest Bernard near Mortaine. They were intended to become part of de Vomécourt’s AUTOGYRO circuit, and the operation name AUTOGYRO C may have persuaded Foot that it had been the container-drop. Nor were there any other sorties around that date which come close to matching purpose and place.

Knowles and his crew found the target easily. This container-dropping operation is described in detail: it was to a reception party which displayed a triangle of lights. The crew spent some 15 minutes over the target. With no direct communication possible between the the pilot and the ‘bomb-aimer’, it was impossible for Knowles to fly a course close enough to the lights. Eventually he used the bomb-jettison switch to make the drop. He wrote that the containers “should have landed within 200 yards of the circle of lights.”

It took them 42 minutes to reach Tours — about right for a 110-mile dash from Bas Soleil to reach the Normandy coast safely before daybreak — , and they reached Cabourg at 4.02, reaching Tangmere 40 minutes later, and Newmarket at 5.41.

A notable incident at Newmarket

An hour before Knowles landed, Newmarket witnessed the landing of a Wellington of No. 75 (NZ) Squadron. The Wellington had been attacked by a Messerschmitt Bf110 night fighter, which set its starboard wing on fire at the rear of the engine housing. Sgt Pilot James Ward climbed out onto the wing, kicking foot-holds in the geodesic wing-structure. He was secured – if that is quite the right word – to the aircraft by a rope taken from the Wellington’s dinghy, held by another crew-member. He beat out the flames with a canvas sheet. Newmarket, with its 3,000 yd landing-field, was one of Bomber Command’s emergency landing-fields. (Group informed Stradishall at 0400 that a ‘rocky’ 75 Sqn Wellington ‘R’ was going to land without flaps, so it needed the longest runway possible. Newmarket’s grass runway would also slow the Wellington down better than a concrete one. The flaps may not have been damaged, but the risk of a crash was much greater if only one side worked.)

Ward was awarded the VC for his gallant actions in saving the aircraft. He was killed the following September, taking part in a raid on Hamburg.

Operation SHE

The target for this operation is near Perigueux in the Dordogne; a long trip for the short nights of early summer. F/Lt Jackson and his crew are bedevilled with technical and other troubles on the way to the target area. First they run into a head-wind which reduces their ground-speed to 140 mph, which will delay their arrival at the target (though it will bring them back faster if it persists), but they also encounter trouble with the exactors, oil-filled hydraulics which control the pitch of the airscrews. Over France they find that petrol will not flow from the auxiliary tanks installed in the bomb-bay and fuselage, so after two more attempts to get the fuel flowing they turn back.

Twenty minutes later they managed to get the auxiliary tanks flowing, so they turned back for Perigueux. They then realise that they cannot reach the target area until 04.00. Crucially, they cannot reach their exit point on the Atlantic coast until 05.00, in daylight: a very unhealthy prospect with enemy fighters known to patrol the area. They sensibly decide it isn’t worth the risk, and return. They see an enemy aircraft spinning down in flames near Selsey Bill, and land back at Newmarket at 02.47.

Operation MOONSHINE – consequences

During the day, before flying the operation described above, Knowles, as the Flight’s Commanding Officer, has an immediate and pressing problem: he is now custodian of a corpse on English soil, the body of an agent whose existence, let alone his identity, can not be subjected to a coroner’s inquest. These, by law, have to be public. Knowles has already experienced similar circumstances: at Stradishall in April a French agent fell to his death when his parachute failed to open. After Austin landed Knowles is furious with him, and demands to know why he didn’t order the rear gunner to shoot the agent off; four machine-guns would have left nothing to bring back. (The episode is witnessed by the Orderly Room Chief Clerk, F/Sgt Stanley Matthews, related personally to the author in 2004, and subsequently confirmed by John Austin.)

Operation MARBLES

Austin, his crew (less Pulton) and Nesbitt-Dufort, fly over the North Sea, pausing briefly before proceeding to the Belgian coast and the Ardennes. Near Chimay they drop the 43-year-old Paul Jacquemin to join the ‘Clarence’ intelligence circuit. On his return Austin writes a sparse report on operation MARBLES, but omits to mention what Nesbitt-Dufort  writes in his post-war memoir: that on the outward journey the body of Armand Leblicq, wrapped in a weighted tarpaulin, is gently dropped with a silent prayer over the North Sea.

Aftermath

Dodds-Parker confesses the grisly truth to Paul-Henri Spaak, Foreign Minister of the Belgian government-in-exile, as soon as he returns to London.

After the war, Leblicq’s widow, Elizabeth Maréchal, contacts the Belgian authorities and demands to know what has become of her husband. She is told that he has died on special operations, and she is put in contact with the rump of SOE responsible for tying up its loose ends. SOE consults Harry Sporborg, Gubbins’s deputy. Sporborg pays a visit to the Registrar-General, and tells him of the circumstances. Sporborg emerges with a death-certificate for Armand Leblicq. It gives the date of his death as 7 July 1941, and the place as Great Bradley, the nearest village to 1419 Flight’s base at Newmarket Heath. The certificate enables Madame Leblicq to get a widow’s pension.

Sources

TNA AIR 20/8334, Encls. 30A, 32A, 41A
SOE War Diary, July 1941
Personal interviews: Sir Douglas Dodds-Parker, John Austin
Douglas Dodds-Parker, ‘Setting Europe Ablaze’, pp.93-5
John Nesbitt-Dufort, ‘Black Lysander’, p.102
MRD Foot, SOE in the Low Countries’, pp 247-8, and personal correspondence
Stradishall Ops Officers’ logbook, 5-7 July 1941.
CEGESOMA, Leblicq PF

Sunday, 6 July 1941

Operation MOONSHINE/OPINION

Sgt Austin flies the next attempt to drop MOONSHINE and OPINION, taking off at 23.10. He takes F/Lt John Nesbitt-Dufort, the Lysander pilot commended by Jackson as a good map reader. Shortly before take-off Sgt Austin also invites the SOE accompanying officer, Captain Douglas Dodds-Parker, to come on the operation. Dodds-Parker, a Guards Officer and (it should go without saying) perfectly turned out, leaves his personal items – his cap, gloves, ID and stick – with his FANY driver and climbs aboard the Whitley.

Even among the variety of individuals who volunteer to become agents OPINION is unusual: he is a Jesuit priest, Father Jourdain. Eric Dadson, the head of the Belgian ‘T’ Section of SOE, has recently journeyed to the Roman Catholic seminary at Buxton, Derbyshire, to solicit Father Jourdain’s advice on garnering support from the Belgian church hierarchy, a substantial influence on the King, who has remained in Belgium. The 43-year-old Jourdain volunteers to go himself, is parachute-trained as an SOE agent – the combat and sabotage aspects are omitted – and he is paired with a wireless-operator, Armand Leblicq (MOONSHINE). Leblicq has, like Emile Fromme, been recruited from the ranks of the Chasseurs Ardennais.

On this his second journey to the airfield Leblicq becomes distressed. The previous night’s failed attempt has clearly unsettled him. In Dodds-Parker’s car, on the way from his safe house to Newmarket, he asks Dodds-Parker to find him a priest, to hear his confession and to absolve him of his sins before he jumps. The depths of rural East Anglia are not the easiest place to find a Catholic priest at short notice, even on a Sunday. Even if Dodds-Parker knows where to find one, involving a local padre would compromise security. It just cannot be done.

Leblicq is still oblivious to the real identity of his companion seated with him in the car. At Newmarket, Dodds-Parker explains his predicament to the Flight: F/Lt ‘Sticky’ Murphy offers to turn his collar round and hear the agent’s confession; as a Catholic he knows the form of words. But this proves unnecessary. Father Jourdain speaks briefly with Dodds-Parker, and agrees to drop his cover in order to absolve his wireless-operator. To reveal one’s real identity, even to a fellow-agent – especially to a fellow-agent, who might just turn traitor – is taking a terrible risk. In a corner of the hut used for briefing and final preparation, Jourdain hears his companion’s confession. They then board the Whitley.

All goes well at first. Austin and his augmented crew take off shortly after eleven, at last light. They fly much the same route as Jackson the previous night — Nieuwport, Charleroi and Dinant — but this time they find the target.

OPINION (Jourdain) jumps first, lands safely, and waits for Leblicq, who will be dropped with a small spade for burying the parachutes and harnesses. But Leblicq never appears. Jourdain makes do with a small pocket-knife, and walks towards Marche-en-Famenne.

What has become of Leblicq? He has been calm during the flight, and there seems to be nothing wrong. As a wireless-operator he would have been dropped using the ‘A’ type harness, which was basically a cargo parachute with a pair of 11-foot strops beneath which attach to the agent’s harness. When he drops, the package containing the wireless set, the shovel and any other kit) will follow him down the Whitley’s parachuting-hatch, followed by the parachute-bag containing the canopy. The parachute-bag is attached to the Whitley by a 16-foot cable, so that the canopy would be pulled from the bag last, with the agent and package already well clear behind the aircraft. The agent only has to thrust himself off the lip, make himself as straight and upright as possible, and fall through the hatch; everything else will follow.

And it did. Except that on this occasion a fold of the emerging parachute-canopy catches on the Whitley’s fixed tail-wheel. Normally there is a metal shroud fitted in front of the tail-wheel to prevent this, but it is a flimsy affair, likely to be dislodged by the Whitley taxying over the rough grassland at Newmarket. Leblicq is snagged like a fish on a line, gyrating wildly in the slipstream behind the Whitley. The rear-gunner, Pilot Officer Pulton, is abruptly and inescapably faced with the spectacle of a man being spun to screaming death a few feet away, impossible out of reach.

Austin feels the controls go spongey and erratic, as the partially-opened ‘chute now acts like a sea-anchor streamed behind the aircraft. The gyrating agent makes the Whitley difficult to control. Nesbitt-Dufort and Dodds-Parker clamber over the main spar in to the rear fuselage to see if they can help. Dodds Parker offers to be attached to a static-line and streamed out of the rear door, but the skipper forbids it: Leblicq’s body flailing around in the slipstream is already making the Whitley almost uncontrollable. The parachute-canopy and its ghastly burden might as well be on Mars for all they can do. Austin turns carefully for home, and the wireless operator signals for medical help; Pulton, distraught at seeing a man strangled mere feet in front of him, collapses and has to be hauled from his turret. At Newmarket John Austin lands the Whitley as gently as he can, but Leblicq is long dead. P/O Pulton will not fly again on ops until September.

Austin writes a brief record of the operation, which has survived. In it, all he writes of the tragedy is: ‘Pin point was located at 01.06 and one agent was dropped without a hitch. Rear Gunner saw parachute open but agent was not seen to land. The other agent was brought back to base – report 1419/s.701/P.1 d/d 7.7.41 refers.’

This report – 1419/S.701/P.1 d/d 7/7/41 – has not been found.

Friday, 4 July 1941

The July moon period opens with two operations, one to France, the other to Holland. The short nights, with only a few hours of proper darkness, have significantly reduced the range for clandestine operations.

Operation ARAMIS

Sgt Austin takes off at 23.30 DST, nearly two hours after sunset, so there must have been some delay. The nights are so short that every minute counts. The Whitley crosses the English coast at 00.06 over Southwold, and crosses the Dutch coast between the flak-fortified islands of Vlieland and Texel, probably at about 01.00. Accompanying Sgt Austin’s crew that night is F/Lt Boris Romanoff who has spent the previous year dropping trainee parachute troops at Ringway. He is along to learn how to fly the Whitley on operations, and to practise his navigation.

The moon sets at 02.13 DST: they have only a few minutes of moonlight to find the target before it sets. They didn’t find it, but searched in the darkness for an hour and a half. Above the Zuidlaardermeer, south-east of Groningen, the Whitley is caught in three searchlights, which are shot out on the pilot’s orders. The crew locates what they think is the target at 02.55, and drop the agent with his wireless set. They see his parachute open, but didn’t see him land.

Austin’s operational report indicates that the operation is successful, but Alblas has been dropped near Nieuweschans, extremely close to the German border. It’s fair to say that the navigator was lost, and it’s only good fortune that the agent hasn’t been dropped in Germany.

ARAMIS is Aart Hendrik Alblas. Previously a petty-officer with the Dutch merchant navy, Alblas has escaped to England in a motor boat in March. He has been recruited by the Dutch and British intelligence services and given wireless training, though the brief time between his recruitment and insertion indicates that he was already part-trained. In September 1941 he will be commissioned in the Dutch Naval Reserve.

As well as his intelligence work, Alblas appears to have played a valuable part in helping other organisations maintain contact with England. But by early 1942 his other contacts will be penetrated by the Abwehr’s ‘Englandspiel’ against SOE’s agents. In July 1942 he will be arrested and imprisoned in the infamous Oranjehotel. Refusing to collaborate, he will be deported to Mauthausen, where he will be executed on 6 September 1944.

Operation FITZROY (strictly, FITZROY B)

The code name FITZROY is usually associated with Claude Lamirault, the founder of the SIS-sponsored JADE-FITZROY network, formed primarily to gather intelligence on the German Navy based in the Atlantic ports. Lamirault, parachuted in January 1941, needs an agent to select and prepare Lysander landing-fields.

The agent this time is an artillery officer with the Free French, Lieutenant Roger Mitchell. The grandson of a Scottish immigrant to France whose family has retained English as a second language, Mitchell is entirely fluent in both languages, and can pass as a native of either country. According to Hugh Verity, Lt Mitchell has been loaned by de Gaulle to British Intelligence to assist the Polish intelligence networks operating from southern France. This comes later: his first role is to assist Lamirault.

One of Mitchell’s tasks is to arrange landing grounds for pick-up operations. As ‘2nd Lieutenant Fitzroy B’, he has recently been trained in landing-field selection and Lysander night-operations by F/Lt Nesbitt-Dufort, who on the 14th June writes a highly favourable report on his pupil.

The first attempt has been made by F/Lt Jackson on June 11th, in poor weather. Jackson has another go, taking S/Ldr Nesbitt-Dufort as navigator/map-reader. Ron Hockey is Jackson’s regular navigator; Nesbitt-Dufort is a specialist in low-level navigation, having been a fighter-pilot in the 1930s and an exponent of ‘Bradshawing’, the habit of following railway lines and navigating from station to station, reading the platform signs to find out where he was.

They take off at 10.30, arriving over Abingdon after forty minutes. Crossing the Channel at 4,000 feet and 135 mph ASI, they drop half their pigeons shortly after crossing the French coast. They fly on to the Loire, at 163 mph at 3,000 feet. Reading between the lines of Jackson’s report, they appear to follow the river Vienne, then the Creuse, upstream to Le Blanc. Jackson writes that they drop the agent clear of the woods and just north of the lake. The area around Le Blanc is peppered with small lakes so it is not possible to be precise about the landing spot.

On the return journey they drop nickels over Le Blanc, and the remaining pigeons before they cross the coast for home. According to Jackson they land at 6.01, but the Stradishall log records his Whitley ‘A’ landing at 05.00.

Friday, 13 June 1941

Operation AUTOGYRO

Sgt Austin and his crew make the second attempt to drop SOE ‘F’ Section agents Norman Burley and Ernest Bernard near Mortaine, in Normandy.

This night is near the end of the moon period, with light only during the second part of the night. They took off later, at half past midnight, and two hours later pinpointed at Isigny. They dropped pigeons at St Lô en route for Avranches, and when they reached Avranches they flew west ot the coast to check their position. At this point they were flying at about 3,000 feet, with a layer of cloud beneath them at 1,000 ft. They then headed for the target, but ran into 9/10ths cloud. 6 miles before Mortaine they pinpointed St Osvin through a break in the clouds, and pinpointed again at 4 miles from Mortaine by flying around another cloud-gap. But over Mortaine there were no gaps, and as the top of the cloud layer was 500 feet, 100 ft lower than the safe parachuting height, they abandon the operation, and headed for home.

This night is cited by MRD Foot (in SOE in France, page 163) as the delivery, by Austin, of two parachuted containers to Pierre de Vomécourt’s chateau, ‘Bas Soleil’; as Foot put it, ‘the very first supply drop of warlike stores to be made to France’. His information came from the Stradishall Operations Record Book. At best an incomplete source, this was probably all that was made available to him in the early 1960s about air operations. Austin could not have been in two places at once, and his logbook is clear; his five hours in the air were insufficient for a sortie to Limoges.

Operation Outhaulle

Knowles flies his second attempt to drop Pierre Vandermies near Montluçon. This sortie shows how different the same operation could be when flown under the right weather conditions with good visibility.

Knowles, with Murphy as navigator, take off at 22.23. The route flown is via Abingdon and Tangmere. At 23.25, after an hour’s flying, they set off across the Channel, reaching Cabourg just after midnight and Tours 40 minutes later. They find Châteauroux and Montuçon without difficulty. Near the target area a car is seen on the main road, so Vandermies is dropped about three miles further on. The agent’s parachute is seen to open and he appears to have made a good landing, at 01.33. On the return journey they reach the French coast about three miles west of Cabourg, and cross the English coast at 04.00, landing at Newmarket at 05.13 (05.15 according to the Strad log). There is no mention of heights flown or other data.

It is possible that Knowles dropped the two containers to de Vomécourt, but he is specific about coming home immediately after dropping Vandermies. He mentions no additional task in his report. It would have added at least another 45 minutes to his sortie, assuming perfect navigation, and the time aloft (6hrs 45mins) fits a trip to Montluçon and back. In any case Knowles would not have wished to tarry, given the short nights of June.

Thursday, 12 June 1941

Operation ZEBRA – Holland

This sortie is to the eastern Dutch province of Friesland, with the target near the village of Vledder. It demonstrates the roundabout route that SD crews often took in order to be sure of finding a pinpoint.

John Austin takes off from Newmarket just before 01.00 (strictly speaking, therefore, on 13 June – confirmed by the Stradishall Ops Officers’ log) and pinpoints on Southwold as the Whitley flies over the English coast for Holland. They aim for the island of Vlieland which is less dangerous than Texel to the west. They set course for the other side of the Zuiderzee (now the IJsselmeer). On reaching it they fly north seeking a recognisable pinpoint, which they find on seeing a white beacon signalling LW – presumably this is Leeuwarden airbase, occupied by the Luftwaffe. Austin is flying at about 8,000 feet to stay above any light flak, which they encounter between Minnertsga and Harlingen. They then pinpoint at the eastern end of the Afsluitdijk near Makkum, and set course for Urk, reducing height to 2,000 feet. The Noordoostpolder is still being reclaimed, and Urk is still an island, though linked to the mainland by a causeway.

Austin then flies ENE, his navigator map-reading from the front turret. They pinpoint at Steenwijk and then at Vledder. They follow the road from Vledder and drop their ‘passengers’ in a field at 03.28, seeing them land in the centre of the field. They circle and see that the agents have dragged their parachute to a hedge. This shows how bright it is and how low they are.

They then set course for Vlieland, and at 03.43 drop their pigeons over the town of Sneek, which lies directly on their course. After passing Vlieland at 3.54, over the North Sea they reduce height to 1,000 feet ‘to make use of cloud cover in the event of interception’ as twilight has increased visibility to 8 miles. This is the danger of flying operations later in the moon period during high summer, with a late-night take-off: it doesn’t leave a great margin for returning under cover of darkness. Civil Twilight over Vlieland was at 04.21 DST, so they make it out of Holland just in time. They land at Newmarket at 05.54, and at 0610 they report Operation ZEBRA successful.

The agents are Johan Jacob Zomer and Wiecher Bote Schrage. MRD Foot, in his ‘SOE in the Low Countries’, relates their brief career. Zomer appears to be the wireless-operator, for he is arrested on 31 August 1941, caught by wireless triangulation. He will be sent to Sachsenhausen, and he will die there on 11 May 1942. Schrage manages to avoid capture, and meets up with one half of the SOE operation GLASSHOUSE (Cornelis Sporre) who will be parachuted on 7 September, also by Austin. Together Schrage and Sporre attempt to escape to England by sea on 13-14 November, setting off from Peeten, south of Den Helder. They are never seen again.