Monthly Archives: January 1942

Saturday, 10 January 1942

This moon-period has not only been started slightly early, it has been extended slightly to include this sortie slightly after the Last Quarter. The long night allows a relatively short-range sortie to the Le Mans area of northern France, in an attempt to complete several outstanding operations. The urgency may explain why an SIS operation (TENTERHOOK) is flown in the same Whitley as two SOE agents (HORNBEAM and DACE). TRIPOD II is a two-container drop.

Operation TENTERHOOK, HORNBEAM, TRIPOD 2, DACE

P/O Smith takes off in Whitley Z9287 (‘K’) at 01.05, in the early hours of 11 January. After overflying Tangmere at 02.14 Smith climbs to 9,000 ft over the Channel. Encountering thick 6-8/10ths cloud en route, he crosses the French coast at Pte de la Percée at 03.00. He reduces height to 2,000 ft., but there is mist up to about 3,000 ft, giving him horizontal visibility of about 800 yards. He reaches the area of the first target, about 40 km south of Le Mans, at about 03.40.

The first target is for SOE agent HORNBEAM. HORNBEAM was originally intended to go in in October-November, and with another agent, MULBERRY, but he is now to be dropped with Sergeant-chef Bourdat (DACE), the wireless-operator intended for Laverdet (DASTARD). There is also a two-container drop called TRIPOD II.

The target is not identified by the 2nd Pilot, who is map-reading. They fly south to the Loire, where they get a fix at 04.00 and map-read back to the target. Both the 2nd Pilot and HORNBEAM positively identify the target but the expected reception committee is not there.

The precise target for TENTERHOOK is described as being about 1.5 miles ((2.4km) south of Vaas, in the centre of a triangle formed by the larger towns of Le Lude, Château-du-Loir, and Château la Vallière. This operation is unusual in that we have precise instructions on the TENTERHOOK target, reception committee, and signals from the ground. More unusual is that these instructions come from A.I.1(c), so TENTERHOOK is an SIS agent. The ground signal is to be a triangle of red torches, with the Morse letter to be signalled from a lamp at the windward end. But P/O Smith says so little about the second target that it is not clear whether he even makes an attempt to find the second target. Some time after their return to Stradishall, three quarters of an hour after Ron Hockey reports it, a signal is sent to the Air Ministry that TENTERHOOK has been unsuccessful.

P/O Smith writes a report for Operation DACE separate from the others. It is not clear why; it would have been understandable for a separate report to be required for TENTERHOOK, but not DACE.

Sources

TENTERHOOK, HORNBEAM, TRIPOD 2, DACE

TNA AIR 20/8334, Encls. 133A (TENTERHOOK, HORNBEAM, TRIPOD 2) & 134A (DACE)

Friday, 9 January 1942

Postings

The 138 Squadron ORB records that P/O B.D.C. Gibson is posted to No. 138 Squadron from RAF Uxbridge on this date. As Sergeant Gibson he flew as John Austin’s 2nd Pilot on several sorties from June to October 1941. He has been commissioned and has flown several operations since November. For the move to Tempsford in March 1942 he is listed as ‘P/O D. Gibson’. Unless there is more than one P/O Gibson at this time the posting-date seems inaccurate. A S/Ldr C.F. Gibson is killed on a Czech operation in March 1943.

Thursday, 8 January 1942

Malta – Kabrit

With only a couple of nights before the end of the December-January moon period, a poor weather forecast over Yugoslavia for the next few nights rules out any operations until the next moon period. Austin, or rather his Whitley, is not exactly welcome at Malta, for it makes a tempting target for the early-morning air-raids each and every day. Austin’s Whitley is sent back to Kabrit almost as soon as he can be refuelled and dispatched. He has been on the island less than 14 hours.

The Whitley (Z9159) carries five passengers, Yugoslav parachutists, for further training in Egypt. He takes off at five minutes to midnight, and lands in Egypt at 08.30 the next morning.

Sources

TNA AIR 20/8504, JBA report dated 16/2/1942.
Logbooks, S/Ldrs Austin and Livingstone
Conversations, S/Ldr Austin

Wednesday, 7 January 1942

Operation MOUSE/VERMILION

This attempt to drop Edmond Courtin (MOUSE) was the first SD sortie by a wholly Czech crew. P/O Leo Anderle took off from Stradishall at 23.37 and headed for Tangmere and the French coast at Port-en-Bassin. The target was probably near Châteauroux. However, the Whitley soon ran into very wintry weather. Anderle’s report is dominated by the weather: at 01.13, two minutes after his ETA over Port-en-Bassin he flew into an intense snowstorm at 8,000 feet. Over the Channel the cloud tops had been about 5,000 feet, but over France it extended to ground level. Anderle was plagued by severe icing and static storms. A few minutes later he set course for somewhere quite illegible; the only extant copy of Anderle’s report is a very blurred carbon flimsy, and even the clerk compiling the 138 Sqn ORB entry gave up and wrote a brief summary.

At 01.27, at a DR position of 49 degrees North, 0 degrees 12 minutes West (about 30 miles south of Le Havre), Anderle decides to call it a night. (The reliance on DR positioning makes clear that visibility was bad.) At 01.41, DR position Port-en-Bassin, course is set for Tangmere; at this point they are at 3,000 feet. They activate their IFF, and at 2.38 see searchlights and flares roughly ahead; these guide Anderle towards Tangmere, and he lands there at 03.15, the airfield covered by ground haze.

Edmond Courtin is a wireless operator sent out by SOE’s Belgian section, apparently to assist Julian Detal (GYPSY) and Frederic Wampach (VERMILION). (These have already been sent out in September.) In reality Detal has asked for a replacement for Wampach, whose nerve has gone. Nevertheless Courtin is being sent out with a set for Wampach, hence the dual operation name.

It will be March before MOUSE is dropped.

Kabrit to Malta

F/Lt Austin flies back to Malta with a crew of four and four Yugoslav trainee parachutists. His return to Malta has originally been intended for the 2nd, but poor weather prevented it for that night; intensive bombing of Malta has since kept them in Egypt.

A P/O Munroe (about whom no more is known, not even whether he is in 138 Squadron) has been sent out to carry another four Yugoslavs to Malta. F/Lt Austin has refused to carry all the Yugoslavs in his aircraft as having so many in the rear fuselage would risk the Whitley’s centre of gravity. He takes off from Kabrit at 22.50, and lands at Luqa at 10.30 the following morning. There’s no record of P/O Munro’s flight in the other Whitley, so it has to be assumed that his trip is similar.

Sources

MOUSE/VERMILION

TNA AIR 20/8334, Encl. 132A
MRD Foot, SOE in the Low Countries, pp. 259-263

Kabrit to Malta

TNA AIR 20/8504, JBA report dated 16/2/1941
Logbooks: S/Ldrs Austin and Livingstone

Tuesday, 6 January 1942

Operation SHIRT/JACKET

For this sortie Wodsicki’s Halifax is substantially overloaded by more than 1,000 lbs (61,198 lbs).
The aircraft is flown to Lakenheath for embarkation and fuelling befpre taking off at 1955 for Esjberg. Wodsicki reports the take-off hazardous: the runway is slippery and (for some reason not explained) the take-off has to be out of wind. They cross the English coast at 20.26 and course is set for the Danish west-coast port of Esjberg.

They arrive over Esjberg 23.07 and cross Denmark and the Baltic sea, pinpointing on the Swedish island of Bornholm at 00.25. At the target there is no sign of a reception committee, but the agents are dropped anyway. In fairness to the crew, it is still an achievement to have reached Poland and the target area, so the normal procedure for a sortie to France, of returning to base with the agents to try again another night, may have seemed a poor option. Of course we don’t know exactly what Wodzicki’s orders may have been.

He lands back at Attlebridge, short of petrol. The next day he takes off for Stradishall, apparently without informing anyone without gaining permission, despite his instruction to awairt orders from Stradishall.

The Air Transport Form identifies the target for both SHIRT and JACKET as ‘RADOM?’, which is some 100 km south of Warsaw. A likely candidate for the forest where the agents are dropped is the Kozienicki Park, a substantial area to the east of Radom.

In March 1942, Major Perkins, based in Room 96, Horse Guards, writes to Lt Colonel Rudnicki, the head of the VIth Bureau (Polish Intelligence) for details on the RUCTION, COLLAR, SHIRT and JACKET drops, especially their accuracy. Rudnicki’s reply, in Polish but helpfully translated, shows that the JACKET drop was made about 36 km west of the target, on the border between the German Reich and the General Government (in German hands but administratively separate from the areas annexed in 1939). It appears that there was no reception committee for this drop. The agents landed on a forest, and were immediately spotted and engaged by a German patrol, with consequent casualties to both sides. Though the Poles gave more than they got, the area was compromised for future activity.

For SHIRT the Halifax arrived an hour later than specified, by which time the committee had dispersed. The drop was made 5-6 km from the correct point, right over a village; three containers fell into German hands, which rather gave the game away. Though the agents and the money that was dropped with them was recovered by the Poles, this district also had been compromised and could no longer be used.

Operation to Saumur area

Ron Hockey’s logbook shows a sortie to the Saumur area. Based on previous sorties to the area, it’s a fair chance that it was to Marie-Madeleine Fourcade’s ALLIANCE circuit, also known as ‘Noah’s Ark’.
Hockey takes Sgt Wilde as his 2nd Pilot. Sgt Wilde is a new pilot to the squadron, flying a few trips as ‘Second Dicky’ to gain experience before taking on sorties as skipper.

Hockey takes off from Stradishall in Whitley Z6728, and flies a route via Tangmere and Cabourg to Saumur, on the lower Loire (lower than Tours, anyway) and from there to the target. There is no report for this sortie on file or in the 138 Squadron Opersations Record Book. Hardly surprising as the ORB for the entire four-month period for 1941 is compiled later, taking direct transcriptions of the pilots’ reports. Reports from January to March 1942 appear now to exist only in the ORB, the original pilots’ reports having been lost.

Hockey returns via Cabourg, but flies a westerly course to land at St Eval after a six-and-a-half hour trip. St Eval is rather a long way out of the way; but the station had been warned to expect him. Coltishall reports that their airfield is ‘out’ due to weather, so we can assume that poor weather is to blame.

Sea evacuation

On the same night several agents of the SOE RF Section OVERCLOUD team are extracted by MGB 314 from Ile-Guénnoc. Several of these agents have previously been parachuted in: Forman, Labit, Chenal, Paul Simon, and Joêl and Yves Le Tac. The episode is fully described by Brooks Richards (who was in MGB 314’s crew) in ‘Secret Flotillas’.

Sources

Operation SHIRT/JACKET

TNA AIR 20/8334, Encl. 135A
TNA HS4/177

Operation to Saumur area

Ron Hockey logbook

Sea evacuation OVERCLOUD III

Brooks Richards, ‘Secret Flotillas Vol. I’, pp 115-116; Appendix A, p.313.