Tag Archives: Jackson

A.J. (Ashley Duke) Jackson

Wednesday, 11 June 1941

Operation OUTHAULLE

Almost as soon as W/Cdr Knowles’s Whitley leaves the English coast it runs into thick cloud. It is only a few nights after Full Moon, so it is possible to fly at 1,0000 feet under 10/10ths cloud and still see. Enough, it seems, to identify Tours, but as they fly south the weather deteriorates; they are now flying under two thick layers of cloud at 1,200 feet. In the gloom they cannot identify their next pinpoint, somewhere between Chateauroux and Montluçon, so Knowles abandons the operation.

There’s no longer any point in flying low, so they attempt to climb into clear air. Shortly before 03.00 they encounter heavy icing and the port engine cuts. With the other engine running roughly they descend to 4,000 feet, at which the port engine picks up and runs normally. They head back towards England, obtaining a QDM (homing bearing obtained by W/T) from Tangmere. From there they fly back to Newmarket, where they land at about 05.30.

Several sources attest to OUTHAULLE as the operation intended to deliver Pierre Vandermies to the Zéro intelligence group in Belgium, notably Emmanuel Debruyne. The peculiar spelling of the operation comes from Knowles’s report; Knowles is not of a nautical disposition.

Operation FITZROY

F/Lt Jackson and his crew take off at 22.34. (The Ops Officer’s log records 22.45, the difference probably due to Jackson taking his timings from engine-start.) On the first leg to Abingdon they find that the Met. winds are from the opposite direction to the forecast. They climb to 6,500 feet to cross the Channel above thick cloud, but cross the French coast above Le Havre, which has a heavy concentration of searchlights. Flying south, they find Tours at 01.19 but, after finding no improvement in the weather, and knowing a front was approaching, they abandon the operation. The experience of S/Ldr Knowles on OUTHAULLE points to the wisdom of Jackson’s decision.

On the return leg they drop pigeons and leaflets just east of Le Havre, but are held over Newmarket for 48 minutes; Stradishall’s 214 Sqn was operating that night, and several land out at Newmarket. The poor weather has affected bombing operations; the returning bombers take priority.

Operation AUTOGYRO C

The purpose of this operation is to drop two SOE ‘F’ Section agents near Mortaine, in Brittany, to work for the AUTOGYRO circuit. The two agents are Norman Burley and Ernest Bernard.

Sgt Austin and his crew cross the coast near Littlehampton, hoping to make landfall at Isigny. Cloud and rain builds up, so that by the time they are due to reach the French coast it is invisible. On ETA Isigny they change course southwards for Avranches, flying at 6,000 ft. On ETA Avranches they drop to 2,500 ft and set course eastwards for Mortaine. On ETA Mortaine, and still unable to see anything, they start a box search at 3,000 ft. They abandon the attempt and return, dropping pigeons between St Sever and Vire on the way. They land at Newmarket after passing Tangmere and Abingdon.

Sources

OUTHAULLE

TNA AIR20/8334, Encl. 24A
Debruyne, LGSEB, p. 146

FITZROY

TNA AIR20/8334, Encl. 22A

AUTOGYRO C

TNA AIR20/8334, Encl. 26A

Tuesday, 13 May 1941

Operation AUTOGYRO A

Roger Cottin was dropped three nights later by F/Lt Jackson and his crew. Cottin was dropped to set up his own organisation, but eventually became No. 2 to Pierre de Vomecourt. (One oddity: MRD Foot indicates that Cottin met Pierre de Vomecourt in Paris later, and only then was ‘swept up’ into AUTOGYRO; yet the operation name indicates that Cottin was dropped already linked to AUTOGYRO. Nevertheless, Begue did not mention this drop in his report; it was clearly ‘blind’.)

Jackson’s report gives no indication of the location of his target. He does say that a low, late-rising moon on the wane, partially obscured by thin cloud, made it difficult to identify a crucial turning point, then the target itself. Cottin was dropped, and they saw that his canopy was in a tree. They made another circuit, and believed he had made a safe landing. They later realised that Cottin had been dropped in a spot visually similar to the target, but about 6 – 8 miles distant.

Jackson’s report omits the presence aboard of a new 1419 Flight pilot, Sgt John Austin, for operational experience. He is already an experienced Whitey pilot, having already flown a bomber tour with No 51 Squadron.

Sources

TNA AIR20/8334, Encl. 14A.
Logbook, S/Ldr J.B. Austin, DFC*

Sunday, 11 May 1941

Operation JOSEPHINE B

The first attempt at Operation JOSEPHINE had ended badly for the Whitley’s crew, with two fatalities and three seriously wounded, including the pilot, F/Lt Jack Oettle. The Polish agents had not been seriously harmed, but the delay had allowed time for three Frenchmen from Brigadier Gubbins’s newly-established RF Section of SOE to be prepared for the operation. Sgt J. Forman (who had made it back remarkably quickly from Operation SAVANNA), Sous-Lt Raymond Varnier, and Sous-Lt Raymond Cabard were the agents. The scale of the operation was half that of the earlier attempt, but the intended outcome wasn’t impeded.

Jackson and his crew took off from Stradishall half an hour before midnight, but had to circle Abingdon while the wireless-operator checked out a fault with his set. On such a long-range flight the W/T equipment was essential for navigation, it being used to take bearings from home-based radio beacons and, once over France, from foreign radio stations. These were fed to the Navigator. A strong German Forces’ transmitter at Rennes, in Brittany, was especially useful.

Once over Tangmere, course was set for ‘Ile Deke’ (Jackson’s version of the Île d’Aix, between the Île d’Oléron and the mainland). They flew at 8,000 feet above 10/10th cloud until they passed 48°30’N (roughly level with Avranches), the cloud cleared, replaced by low mist and haze.

They eventually spotted La Rochelle to port, and changed course for the target area. Once over the Bordeaux area the crew was expecting some kind of diversionary raid (such as 2 Group had laid on for SAVANNA) to cover their parachuting activity, but there was none. The three agents were dropped at about 01.30, and were seen to have dropped safely with their container near a wood.

After dropping the agents the Whitley headed west, away from trouble into the Bay of Biscay, then north to Ushant, and so to St. Eval, which they spotted by searchlights playing on the underside of the cloud-base. It’s not clear whether St Eval was guiding them in; it was quite common practice for searchlights to shepherd an errant bomber to its base in this manner.

A final comment in the report: “the W/T installation was unreliable for HF/DF assistance” indicates that their only navigation aid beside the aircraft compass was little use. All things considered, the crew did well to find their target, and almost as well to find their way back. It took only a small error, or series of small errors, for an aircraft without W/T aids to miss the south-west peninsula and end up in the Irish Sea. Hence the searchlights over St Eval.

To find out how the operation went after the agents’ landing, I suggest you look at the Wikipedia page on Operation JOSEPHINE.

Friday, 9 May 1941

Operation MARINE/ALBION

Richard van de Walle and Albert Thiou are successfully parachuted into the Eupen district of north-eastern Belgium on the third attempt.

This time the weather is better. Jackson and his crew also take along a passenger: S/Ldr Jack Benham of the parachute training staff at Ringway. A week later Benham will take command of the Parachute Training Squadron at Ringway. As Ringway is responsible for agents’ parachute training, he is getting first-hand experience of the operational side.

Soon after the Whitley crosses the coast at Knokke it is bracketed by accurate and simultaneous searchlights and flak, but remains undamaged. Ground haze makes visibility difficult as they fly south, then east, but eventually they pick up a pinpoint, do their timed run and drop the two agents. They return to the coast via Poperinghe, where they drop their quota of COLUMBA pigeons; six return to the UK. They return to Stradishall at just after 4 a.m.

Aftermath

On 5th June, Gp/Capt. John Bradley, DFC, S/Ldr Knowles’s boss at the Air Ministry (for the Flight receives its operational orders direct from Air Intelligence), writes asking for clarification about two operations. One of these is MARINE/ALBION. It has been reported back to SIS that the aircraft had flown over the pre-selected spot, was seen by people waiting for them on the ground, but the agents were dropped elsewhere. Neither agent has made contact. Worse, the two agents are reported to have been dropped over Germany.

Knowles assures Bradley that the crew has made every effort to drop the agents at the correct place. F/Lt Jackson writes a second report detailing his actions precisely: they had positively identified the Gileppe reservoir before flying for two minutes on a bearing of about 326 degrees true, (the ‘about’ because the observer was guiding the pilot from the bomb-aimer’s position, using a large-scale map). This is somewhat undermined by Knowles’s covering note, which asserts that they steered due north from the reservoir.

The map that accompanies Jackson’s memo (of which only a file copy exists) has not survived, at least publicly. The dropping-point appears to have been the high ground to the north or north-east of Limbourg, the exact position being dependent on the Whitley’s speed of between 80 and 100 knots, and its position over the lake, which is over a mile long.

If they were dropped in the right place, on target, they may still have landed in Germany. On 29 July 1940 the districts of Eupen, Malmedy and Sankt Vith had been annexed to Germany. Even a western-most placement of the target would still have been in Germany. It is entirely possible that neither the agents nor their handlers in the UK were aware of the boundary changes. There’s certainly no indication in the correspondence.

It may be significant that the crew had not reported any lights from a ground-party; according to the Air Ministry correspondence there were people on the ground waiting for the agents. But these were very early days, and almost all drops were done ‘blind’; a ground-party with torches for guidance and signalling would have been exceptional.

There is another possibility, but an unlikely one. What they took for Lac de Gileppe might just have been Lake Eupen, a smaller but similar lake about 8 km (5 miles) further east. It. too, has a dam at the western end, but the lake is smaller, its shape and orientation is very different, and there is no marshland on the south shore. Built in 1938, the reservoir was not inaugurated until 1950 by Prince Charles of Belgium. It may not have been filled in May 1941.

In a biography of Leopold III, mention is made of two agents dropped in May 1941, Richard Van de Walle, with Albert Thiou as his W/T operator. De Walle’s mission was to enter the service of an un-named Belgian aristocrat who would act as an intermediary with the King, to allow the King to have a link with his government-in-exile. Debruyne says that Van de Walle was arrested within hours of his landing in Belgium.

Operation FELIX (pick-up)

Philip Schneidau is picked up by Lysander by Gordon Scotter. This third Lysander pick-up operation is Schneidau’s second. Schneidau’s torches lead him to the right place, and Scotter lands after exchanging signals. After his earlier episode with Coulomb/Cartwright, Scotter is understandably nervous. When a figure he does not recognise hoists himself level with the cockpit Scotter draws his service revolver and waves it at the intruder.  But Schneidau may have re-adopted the disguise he’d used on his first mission.

Schneidau tells Scotter to “put that bloody thing away”, gathers up his torches into a rucksack, and climbs aboard. They take off and the return journey is uneventful. They have a night fighter escort for the final stage of the journey.

Tuesday, 6 May 1941

Operation MARINE/ALBION

This is the second attempt, flown by the same crew. This time they are carrying two packets of ‘nickels’, which implies neither pigeons nor bombs. The weather is considerably worse: after take-off they flew under 10/10th cloud to the Belgian coast, which they see through a break in the continuous layer beneath them. Flying above continuous cloud at 6,500 feet to the target area, they try to descend, but icing forces them to climb again. They achieve this ‘with difficulty’, and the operation is abandoned. On the return journey they see the mining town of Charleroi through a cloud-gap, and drop their leaflets before heading for the coast and home.

Bombs are not carried again on Special Duties operations for more than a year, and then the circumstances are quite different. It may have been decided that dropping bombs would put the valuable passengers at increased risk: a ‘Joe’ primed for dropping is the result of several months’ training; in some cases they were irreplaceable. The possible benefit to the war from a few bombs is negligible.

Operation COLUMBA

A pigeon arrives back in the UK on 7th May from West Flanders. This could have been one of those dropped by Jackson on 8 April, but a month would have been a very long time to keep a pigeon, unless it had been injured in dropping.