Tag Archives: Oettle

Albert John Oettle

Thursday, 14 November 1940

Morlaix, Brittany

F/O Oettle (as skipper) and F/Lt Keast fly the first RAF insertion operation for SOE (or SO2 as it is known for several months after its formation).

Whitley T4264 is airborne from Stradishall at 21.00. Its target is near the town of Morlaix, in Brittany. The agent comes from de Gaulle’s Free French, from what will later become known  as SOE’s ‘RF’ (Republique Française) Section.

The Whitley arrives over the target, but when it comes to the moment for the agent to jump, he refuses. He certainly isn’t the last, but he is the first. Later refusals are sometimes for valid reasons, such as snow on the ground, which would reveal the agent’s tracks leaving the DZ, but the reason for this refusal remains unknown.

The crew has no choice but to return to base. The agent is returned to staff duties. In his SOE in France, Professor MRD Foot saw no reason to identify the agent, saying that he later ‘did well’. Foot was an SAS parachutist himself, dropped into France in 1944, so he knew what he was about.

Tuesday, 22 October 1940

RAF Stradishall

F/O Jack Oettle is awarded the DFC. This is almost certainly for his tour of bomber operations with No. 51 Squadron which he had completed in the summer. One of these had been a reconnaissance which took in Vienna and Prague. The operation and the crew made the newspapers. Of his other operations, he was forced to bale out over England on one occasion, and was involved in a serious crash on another.

Saturday, 12 October 1940

RAF Stradishall

The operation mounted this night incorporates several ‘firsts’: the first Special Duties operation from Stradishall and the first under Bomber Command control; the first operation for O’Neill’s replacement F/Lt Frank Keast  who flies as Second Pilot to F/O Jack Oettle; and the first agents parachuted into Nazi-occupied Belgium. This is also the first insertion of a pair of agents as organiser and wireless-operator, which becomes a standard practice.

P5029 has arrived at Stradishall at 11.35 that morning, to replace the Flight’s newer Whitley destroyed by P/O Greenhill the previous day.  Oettle and Keast take off in P5029 at 22.23. Sgts Bernard and Davies are back on duty despite their crash the previous day. They land back at 0255. Keast’s logbook says the trip took 4 hours 40 minutes, which is close enough. (Frequently there are differences between take-off and landing times as recorded by the Watch Office and the Ops Officer. Logbook times tend to be longer than either, as pilots record flight from first taxi to engines off, which the Watch office doesn’t see.)

Constant Martiny and Armand Desnerck

The agents are dropped in the bois Saint-Jean, between the villages of La Roche and Houffalise, some way north of Bastogne. The agents are Constant Martiny and Armand Desnerk, his wireless-operator. Martiny is 52, and breaks his ankle on landing. (The Belgian historian Emmanuel Debruyne says that they didn’t receive any parachute training.) Martiny has been a clerk in the Ministry of Aviation. His contact in Belgium is Joseph Daumerie, a pilot from the Great War, and their circuit Daumerie-Martiny gains some 300 agents recruited locally. Martiny is captured on 13 May 1941, and is deported to Germany. Tried in Berlin, he is sentenced go death, and he is executed on 26 August 1942. There is a memorial near the Chateau de bois Saint-Jean, presumably near where he landed.

Thursday, 10 October 1940

RAF Tangmere

Tonight the weather is better: fine and clear. Take-off is earlier, at 21.45 according to Farley, again flying as Second Pilot to F/O Oettle. The crew is probably the same as the night before. So is the Whitley.

This time there is no mist over the Fontainebleau forest. The target is found easily and Schneidau is dropped successfully, The ‘A’ type harness has a container which sits between his head and the canopy. In the container is a rucksack with two pigeons inside, immobilised by socks placed over their bodies, their heads poking out from holes cut in the toes. The ‘A’ type harness is an adapted cargo parachute with 11-foot strops beneath to carry the agent. It cannot be steered by the parachutist.

The Whitley and its crew return to Tangmere, landing at 04.05.

Wednesday, 9 October 1940

RAF Tangmere

With the new Moon period, a fresh attempt is made to parachute Philip Schneidau into the Bourron-Marlotte sand-quarry. Take-off is scheduled for 23.00.

The Flight is using its new Whitley, P5025, which has arrived on the 6th. The revised establishment for 419 Flight is for two Lysanders plus two in reserve, and one Whitley with another in reserve. (The Flight will actually have only three Lysanders, because the one lost on 17 August has not been officially declared lost; R2625 will remain on 138 Squadron’s books for several months until it is quietly dropped.) There is only one Whitley crew: P/O Jack Oettle, with F/Lt Farley as 2nd Pilot. Sergeants David Bernard and Dai Davies are almost certainly aboard as Wireless Operator and Rear Gunner, and the navigator will be identified by Hugh Verity only as ‘Jacky’ Martin. S/Ldr Ross Shore flies as a ‘passenger’, in his role as coach to Philip Schneidau.

They take off at 2300 hours, and land back at Tangmere seven hours later, foiled yet again by bad weather.