Tag Archives: Simmonds

Friday, 27 February 1942

Operations CARROT/CATARRH

Pilot Officer D.J. Simmonds takes off in Whitley Z9232 at 21.38, on a sortie to the eastern Netherlands. He is to complete two operations attempted two nights earlier by two aircraft. First he crosses the Dutch coast north of Alkmaar at 5,000 feet and crosses the ZuiderZee to Harderwijk, which in 1942, before the post-war creation of Flevoland from the Ijsselmeer, was on the southern coast of the inland sea. The agent is to be woken 15 minutes before the drop, and given some food and drink; he is not being met, so it may be the last time he eats for some time. Over the Ijsselmeer Simmonds has dropped to about 1,500 feet, then 500, before dropping CARROT somewhere near Harderwijk. CARROT recognises the spot, so the crew are confident he has been dropped in the right place. Simmonds then returns to Harderwijk before setting course at 2,000 ft for Meppel, which in 1942 is also only just inland. From Meppel he flies up a railway line; the target is a clearing in a wood. The reception torches are seen, and the two containers are dropped to the CATARRH group, which is yet to be rumbled by the Abwehr.

Simmonds and his crew return to Stradishall, landing at 02.50. Unusually, the crew includes a Flight Engineer, not normally part of a Whitley crew. This consists of P/O Simmonds as skipper, Sgt Harvey as 2nd Pilot, F/Sgt Howard as Air Observer (i.e. Navigator), Sgt Flint as Flight Engineer, Sgt Ramsay as Wireless Operator, F/Sgt Todd as Rear Gunner, and Sgt Farquharson as Despatcher. None of these appear in any other 138 Squadron operations records.

CARROT is George Dessing, a thirty-two year old, independently-minded Dutchman accountant who has lived in Vienna and South Africa. His independent spirit is what saves him, for he is given a solo mission. He is therefore unusual among Dutch agents in that he avoids becoming entangled with existing circuits. He makes contact with trade-unionists and underground writers, gathers some useful intelligence, and returns to London successfully, though MRD Foot does not say when he returns.

Operation BOOT

Hockey flies towards Poland to drop six agents, 1 package and four containers; originally planned for a month earlier, priority ‘A’ (high). He takes off at 18.55, but encounters 10/10ths cloud 50 miles from the English coast. This persists over Denmark and the German coast, with icing, too. He returns to base with his load, and lands at 04.05.

For 26 February the 138 Squadron Operations Record Book notes: ‘No. 532269 Corporal D.F. White, Fitter IIa, killed in taxying accident.’ After the war Hockey remembered the accident happening as he was taxying on an icy runway after landing from Operation BOOT: the unfortunate fitter was somehow beneath the aircraft, out of Hockey’s field of vision; and of course it was dark. He rolled instinctively outward, falling under one of the undercarriage wheels. While a fading memory cannot be relied on for a firm date, neither can the ORB; it got Corporal V.F. White’s initials wrong, too.

Operation COLLAR

Sergeant Pieniasek is the pilot, but in the Operations summary book the name against the sortie is F/O Vol — possibly short for Voelnagel, as there is no ‘Vol’ listed). The Polish Air Force follows the continental practice of the Navigator as aircraft captain, the pilot’s role being that of a chauffeur. The target is given as RADOM but, as with BOOT, the pinpoints are stated on the ATF as changed daily. The Poles are wary of British security, which is surprisingly since they report visiting the Air Ministry Air Intelligence section and seeing a wall-map littered with target flags.

Pieniasek takes off in Halifax L9618 at 18.50. He reaches the Danish coast at 21.23, but turns back owing to engine trouble. They return to Stradishall with their load, landing at 00.45. The ‘five X-type’ indicates five agents, with four containers. It’s also likely that they take off from RAF Lakenheath, as also stated in the ATF.

Though the ORB lists Pieniasek as a Flight Sergeant, this is another indication that the ORB is constructed later, for several aircrew are given ranks that they attain only some months afterward.

161 Squadron: Operation BACCARAT

Another twelve men, probably the entire complement of 161 Squadron, arrive at Tangmere Cottage and join F/Lt Murphy and the squadron’s CO, W/Cdr E.H. Fielden.

Murphy flies 161 Squadron’s first pick-up operation. On the outward journey he takes out a female agent known only as ‘ANATOLE’. In Lysander V9428 (a new one) he takes off from Tangmere at 21.45. Fifteen minutes later he is over Beachy Head, and sets course for Abbeville. This should involve flying over the Somme estuary and up the river. Met by 10/10th cloud over the Channel, he climbs above it to 8,000 feet. Three minutes before his ETA for Abbeville he loses height through the cloud. He should be near Le Crotoy, but when he emerges there is no sign of the coast. He is at less than 1,000 feet with less than two miles visibility. He heads north-west to cross the coast, but when he reaches it there is nothing to be recognised. The cloud-base has dropped to 700 feet, and the weather is closing in.

Murphy then does something that is definitely against standard procedure, which is to call up Tangmere on his R/T and request a fix. Normally an SD Lysander pilot is instructed never to use the R/T until he is clear of the enemy coast on his return journey. The Chain Home Low radar system can track Murphy nearly all the way over the Channel, but not inland; by flying in a certain identifiable pattern he can be identified, then given a bearing which will enable him to pinpoint his position. I can only think that Murphy’s action is justifiable because of the poor weather and low visibility. Ten minutes later he gets his fix and sets course for Abbeville, which he reaches at 23.43. He then flies the nearly 40 miles south-west to the village of Saint-Saens, where nearby at midnight he is met by the torches of the reception party, and lands.

ANATOLE is disembarked. Some time is then spent on the ground while bags of ‘courier’ (i.e. intelligence-related documents) are loaded aboard, and two agents clamber aboard. They are BCRA agent Pierre Julitte (JULIE) and film-maker Gilbert Renault-Roulier, better-known by his code-name (and the name under which he wrote a series of post-war memoirs, ‘REMY’. Nothing appears to be known about ‘ANATOLE”, only Rémy’s comment that: “She laughs, very happy to be back in France. I understand that she totally vanished.”

The landing-site is about 32 kilometres SSE from Dieppe, near the village of Saint-Saens. It is such a short trip that it could have been flown by the short-range Lysander R2626 had it still been operational. The reason for Murphy to fly via Abbeville, well east of a direct route to the target, I initially put down to Dieppe being an unhealthy place to be at any height. His strange route may have more to do with the Bruneval raid which takes place on the same night, north of Le Havre, enforcing separation to minimise the chance for any interference.

Sources

CARROT/CATARRH

Dessing PF: TNA HS9/428/3
138 Squadron ORB
138 Squadron Ops Summary
MRD Foot, SOEILC, pp. 119-20

BOOT

Hockey logbook
138 Squadron ORB

COLLAR

138 Squadron ORB
Air Transport Forms for Feb ’42.

BACCARAT

Verity, WLBM p.46.
TNA AIR 20/8455
Noguères, HRF Vol 2, p. 359 (as quoted in Verity notes, p. 224.)

Friday, 13 February 1942

Operation NUTMEG

The sum of knowledge about this operation is contained in the 138 Squadron summary book of operations, which notes this as an SIS operation to France; it was not completed. The pilot is not identified.

Freddie Clark believed that P/O Simmonds had first attempted NUTMEG on the 31 January, the same sortie as his operation OVERCLOUD II, but I have found no evidence to support this. Nor have I found any evidence that P/O Simmonds was the pilot who flew NUTMEG on 13 February. Freddie may have linked P/O Simmonds to NUTMEG because the OVERCLOUD II operation of 31 January is listed immediately above in the squadron summary.

P/O Simmonds is a relative newcomer to the squadron, and is most unlikely to have been detailed to fly an SIS sortie to be carried out at the New Moon, i.e. with no moonlight. Such sorties are very rare, even when requested by SIS.

Sources

TNA AIR 27/956: Operations Record Book, 138 Squadron
TNA AIR 20/8459: 138 Squadron, Rough diary of operations.
Freddie Clark, Agents by Moonlight, p. 43.

Saturday, 31 January 1942

These OVERCLOUD operations can easily be confused with the maritime OVERCLOUD operations reported in Brooks Richards’s ‘Secret Flotillas’. They relate to the same organisation, set up by the Free French (RF) section of SOE, and involved several figures who had been instrumental in some of the very early SOE sabotage operations. It operated in Brittany, and was therefore under the watchful eye, and control where naval activities were concerned, of SIS.

The first OVERCLOUD air sortie has already been carried out by P/O Anderle on 12 December, a container-drop near to the Meucon airfield near Vannes.

Operation OVERCLOUD 2

P/O Simmonds takes off at 19.36 in Whitley ‘L’, Z9232. He is over the target at 23.35 and drops four containers. (The report does not mention the two packages on the ATF.) Due to poor visibility they land at Steeple Morden at 02.00. There is no information available about the target.

Operation OVERCLOUD 3

Sgt Peterson takes off at 21.04 in Whitley ‘M’ Z9282. Over the target at 00.55; four containers are dropped. Peterson returns without encountering any enemy opposition (encounters are rare anyway at this period of the war) and lands at Stradishall at 03.54.

The timings of these two sorties indicate the possibility that these sorties formed a ‘double’, though if both targets were at the same location the second drop would have been risky to those on the ground. The organisation had several experienced personnel, easily enough to man two separate landing-sites; this would also have facilitated the disposal of the containers and the dispersal of their contents.

Takeoff and landing times are from the Stradishall log.

Sources

OVERCLOUD 2 and 3

Stradishall Ops Officers’ Log
138 Squadron ORB
TNA AIR 20/8334, encl. 115A
TNA HS 7/123 (SOE RF History)