Tag Archives: Murphy

Alan ‘Sticky’ Murphy

Sunday, 1 March 1942

Operation CANTICLE/DUNCAN, MASTIFF/INCOMPARABLE, PERIWIG 1

Sergeant Wilde, a new aircraft captain with 138 Squadron, flies this short-range sortie to Belgium, although the destination is recorded as ‘France’ in the operations summary book. For some unknown reason Sgt Wilde files two separate operations reports which are entered on separate pages in the ORB; this confuses matters further.

Wilde takes off at 18.48. He crosses the French coast north of the river Somme, at about 8,000 feet, pinpoints on Douai at 2,000 feet and descends to 400 feet over the PERIWIG 1 target; in the ATF for PERIWIG 1 it is given as ‘Mons’. He circles the target area from 21.50 to 22.40 (which rather seems to be asking for trouble), but nothing is seen. His PERIWIG report states that he then returns to base, landing at 01.50.

In fact he does no such thing: he goes on to the second target. CANTICLE is originally supposed to have been dropped near Arlon with a W/T set for Joseph Vergucht (DUNCAN). Vergucht, a Belgian merchant navy officer who knows Morse, has been waiting for the means to contact England since autumn of the previous year, having arrived via Lisbon. MASTIFF and INCOMPARABLE are to be dropped to a reception organised by PERIWIG, but a long way south-east from the drop-site for PERIWIG 1.

MASTIFF and INCOMPARABLE are dropped near their target about a mile south of the village of Gondregnies. This is close to the village of Silly, where Armand Campion (PERIWIG) parachuted in August 1941. CANTICLE drops with them. One of the two pigeons he is carrying becomes detached, and travels back in the aircraft. CANTICLE is reported as needing a helping shove down the chute, which may contribute to the pigeon becoming detached.

The Whitley drops leaflets over Douai before returning to Stradishall, landing at 01.50.

Operation MOUSE, VERMILION

Farley takes off from Stradishall in Whitley K9287 at 18.32, and crosses the French coast near Caen, flying at 8,000 feet to be above the light & medium flak defences. He pinpoints on the Loire at about four miles east of Blois. By his own account he drops MOUSE about ten miles SSE from the planned dropping-point, somewhere close to the village of Meillant (Cher), but he gives no explanation as to why he drops the agent so far from the dropping-point. Farley returns to Tangmere rather than Stradishall, and lands at 03.27.

Given that Farley knew where he was, and was not pushed for time, it would seem to have been slapdash not to have drop the agent at the correct place, but it’s possible (though nowhere mentioned) that the agent may be concerned that if they fly north the pilot might drop him in the Occupied Zone; they are less than 30 kilometres west of the demarcation-line, a mere hiccup away in air navigation terms. MOUSE is therefore dropped a short way from the road between Vitray and Meaulne. He makes his way to Meillant the next day, getting a lift in a car to Saint-Amand-Montrond and walking the rest. The crow-flying distance is about 20 kilometres (13 miles), but the agent later says it is thirty; along the road it is 26km.

MOUSE is Edmond Courtin, in his early twenties, intelligent and keen. He may, at Douglas Dodds-Parker’s request (16/1/42), have been given training in laying out Lysander landing-fields during the interval between mid-January and this attempt. He is dropped with two W/T sets, one for himself to work for Jacques Detal (GYPSY), the other set for Detal’s wireless-operator Frederic Wampach (VERMILION) who, as we have seen, is a mental wreck; it’s not his set that has gone wrong. Courtin succeeds in contacting Wampach and passes him the second set.

Courtin’s debriefing report in February 1943 gives valuable information about life in the unoccupied zone. Châteauroux is not a healthy place for an agent to be: Germans ‘double’ with the French police, and two Alsatian policemen are most diligent. The police at Châteauroux check the hotel registers at 7 a.m., and they haul in and interrogate anyone who arouses their least suspicion. Courtin is caught two weeks into his mission through just such a check, red-handed with his wireless antenna laid out round his room. Detal and Wampach are arrested the next day. Detal and Courtin escape from Bergerac prison and Courtin makes it back to the UK in February 1943. Though slated for another mission in April 1943, Courtin’s prospective organiser chooses another wireless-operator.

161 Squadron: Operation BERYL 2, BERYL 3

The Anson that F/Lt Murphy flew to Tangmere on the 25th is now used for perhaps the type’s only operation over enemy-occupied territory. Ansons have been used during the Battle of Britain for anti-invasion patrols over the North Sea close to shore, but this is different.

S/Ldr Nesbitt-Dufort’s month-long absence-without-leave in France is about to come to an end. The agent he was to have brought out in January, Maurice Duclos, has been in charge of his hospitality, hidden by the Issoudun railway station-master and his family. The landing has been arranged by Lt Roger Mitchell, BCRA, who is also needed in London for debriefing. In addition, General Kleeburg of the Polish F2 organisation is to be evacuated. Hence the need for a larger aircraft than a Lysander. In any case, the other Lysander pilot is out on another trip this same night, landing not many miles away.

Murphy takes off from Tangmere in Anson R3316 at 21.00, passing over Cabourg an hour later. Murphy takes P/O Cossar as his wireless-operator/air-gunner. They have good visibility until about 40 miles north of Tours, when they encounter heavy rain, thick low cloud. They have difficulty pinpointing on the Loire, which indicates how poor the weather is. At 23.15 they set course for Châteauroux, which they find with difficulty at 23.55 before heading north-east towards Issoudun. (Châteauroux is much easier to find than Issoudun, being much larger, with a radial road-system.) From Issoudun they fly SSEast to a disused aerodrome where Mitchell, Duclos, Nesbitt-Dufort and General Kleeberg are waiting. (The airfield is now used by the Aero-club Issoudun-le-Fay.) The lights laid out by Roger Mitchell are picked up at 00.10. (There is a slight irony here; eight months before, Nesbitt-Dufort had trained Lt Mitchell in laying out Lysander landing-fields.

When Murphy tries to take off, the Anson becomes bogged down in the soft, now-soggy ground. (He does not mention this in his official report.) Nesbitt-Dufort encourages the other passengers to jump up and down in sympathy, to bounce the aircraft out of the soft ground, while Murphy applies full throttle. This rather unconventional approach works.
Nesbitt-Dufort, in his ‘Black Lysander’, writes another account of his month in France and of the air operation. Both he and his friend Sticky Murphy take a light-hearted view of their adventures, but Murphy’s new CO takes a dim view of their mutual levity in official correspondence. Nesbitt-Dufort, now in possession of too much knowledge about the people who looked after him in France, is posted to the Central Landing School at Ringway, where he flies tug and glider combinations, an experience which frightens him more than being on operations. He is then posted to Fighter Command HQ.

161 Squadron: Operation CREME

Flying Officer Guy Lockhart takes off from Tangmere at 20.25 in Lysander V9428. Lockhart has been a fighter pilot. Shot down over France while serving with No. 74 Squadron in July 1941, he evades and returns to the UK in October. Apparently posted to 138 Squadron soon after his return, no record of his serving there exists, though the first page of 161 Squadron’s ORB records that he has been posted from 138 Squadron; he becomes F/Lt Murphy’s other Lysander pilot.

Just under an hour after takeoff Lockhart crosses the French coast at about 9,500 feet, slightly west of Cabourg, but soon loses height to stay under the thickening cloud. He has difficulty finding the landing site; having to stay low would have reduced his range of vision, but once he sees the lights he is down and away within two minutes, having taken aboard two Gaullist agents, Louis Andlauer and Stanislas Mangin. He flies back to the coast at low-ish level, the cloud base between 1,000′ and 3,000′ with patches even lower. He crosses the French coast east of Cherbourg at 1,500 feet and is homed back to Tangmere by R/T once he is over the Channel.

Louis Andlauer writes an account of this pick-up operation from his perspective. It is reproduced in full in Verity’s book. The location of the pick-up is in the small area north of Châteauroux used by SIS for many of its operations; these included its sorties, like this, for Dewavrin’s intelligence- gathering agents; SOE agents were picked up from elsewhere, and at this stage of the war, rarely.

Sources

CANTICLE/DUNCAN, MASTIFF/INCOMPARABLE, PERIWIG 1

138 Squadron ORB
CANTICLE file: TNA HS6/58
MASTIFF personal file: TNA HS9/351/1
INCOMPARABLE operations file: TNA HS6/113
MRD Foot, SOEILC, pp. 270-1, 274-5

MOUSE, VERMILION

138 Squadron ORB
TNA AIR 20/8334, Encl. 132A

161 Squadron: BERYL 2, BERYL 3

John Nesbitt-Dufort, ‘Black Lysander’, pp 133-4

161 Squadron: CREME

Verity, WLBM, pp. 47-48.
TNA AIR 20/84554 Lysander operations reports, 161 Squadron

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.)

Saturday, 14 February 1942

161 Squadron

No. 161 Squadron is officially formed at RAF Newmarket Heath. It is to take over the Lysander Flight and one Flight of Whitleys from No. 138 Squadron. It will receive more Whitleys as well. The squadron’s Commanding Officer is to be W/Cdr E.H. Fielden, MVO, who has been the King’s personal pilot and commander of the King’s Flight, which has been disbanded. The King’s Flight’s Royal responsibilities will now be carried out by No. 24 (Communications) Squadron, based at Hendon.

The existence of the new squadron will ensure that the relatively small operational requirements of the Secret Intelligence Service SIS are not swamped by the rapid expansion of SOE. SIS has always enjoyed official priority over SOE when it comes to allocating scarce air resources, and this policy has caused considerable resentment. The Lysanders have always been (officially at least) exclusively allocated for SIS purposes, and only two sorties (‘Night Embarkation’ in September 1941, and STOAT in December) have involved SOE personnel. The Whitley Flight is intended for parachuting SIS agents, but in practice it will also take on a fair share of the burden of SOE parachuting operations. In fact No. 138 Squadron does drop a few SIS agents; these operations are marked in the operations summary books.

A Lockheed Hudson belonging to the King’s Flight is to join No. 161 Squadron; the purpose is not clear, for at this stage there is no intention to use this twin-engined aircraft for clandestine operations into Occupied Europe, or indeed into Unoccupied France. In fact it is another year before Hudsons are used operationally in this role.

Postings

The 138 Squadron Operations Record Book notes that S/Ldr A.M. ‘Sticky’ Murphy is posted to the newly-formed 161 Squadron, RAF Gravelly, but the 161 Squadron ORB records 161 Squadron’s formation at Newmarket on the same date. The 138 Squadron ORB will be written up from scratch at some time in the future: the fact that it gets Murphy’s destination and rank wrong — he is atill a Flight Lieutenant — is one of many pointers towards 138 Squadron’s ORB being created after the move to Tempsford.

Friday, 7 November 1941

This night is a busy one for the squadron: one Lysander pickup operation for SIS, one Whitley operation to Holland, consequential for SOE; another to Yugoslavia, a first; and the squadron’s first Halifax operation to Poland, flown by a Polish crew. The night is a heavy one for Bomber Command: it is a ‘maximum effort’ against Berlin, Mannheim, Cologne, Essen and Ostend. 392 aircraft set out, 37 do not return; many are casualties of bad weather over the North Sea.

Operation SAGA, BRICK, FITZROY

In the RAF argot of the era, Nesbitt-Dufort’s second attempt at this operation is a ‘piece of cake’. He takes off an hour later than last night, at 9.20 p.m. (GMT+1), possibly because the moon rises about 40 minutes later. Following the same R/T procedure with the south-coast radar stations, he crosses the French coast between Criel-sur-Mer and Le Treport at 8,000 feet, pinpoints at Compiègne, picks up the target lights inside seven minutes, and lands three minutes later in a field a couple of kilometres WSW of Soissons, close to the village of Ambleney.

He is stationary on the ground for about two minutes and twenty seconds, during which time the A.3. (Belgian section) agent SAGA is disembarked with his luggage, and Claude Lamirault (FITZROY) and Roger Mitchell (BRICK) are embarked with theirs. Take-off and the journey home are uneventful, and Nesbitt-Dufort crosses the French coast a little east of Le Treport. He is given homing instructions by MUNGA and lands back at Tangmere at 20 minutes after midnight, just three hours after take-off.

FITZROY and BRICK are both returning to the UK for debrief and a brief respite from the clandestine life: they will be dropped back on 8 December as CLAUDIUS and BERYL. Roger Mitchell, who has recently stood in for Roman Garby-Czerniawski as head of INTERALLIE during the latter’s own visit to London in October, will be on hand to assist in the assessment of the fallout from the capture of the INTERALLIE circuit in ten days time, specifically to interpret the bogus messages received from Mathilde Carré in her new guise as VICTOIRE, purportedly having evaded capture in the roundup.

Operation CATARRH

This operation has the most grave consequences for SOE, for the agents parachuted are Thijs Taconis and Huub Lauwers. Their capture will trigger the Dutch tragedy known as ‘Der Englandspiel’, the luring of several dozen agents to immediate capture, some to their eventual death.

From F/Lt Murphy’s report, there is nothing portentous about the operation: Murphy and his usual crew, with two Leading Aircraftmen aboard as despatchers, cross the Suffolk coast at Southwold. Half an hour later, over the North Sea, two aircraft close to within 500 yards, but Murphy loses them by turning sharply to port. Flying under a dense bank of cloud they cross the Dutch coast at Ymuiden and fly over the Zuiderzee to Meppel, reaching it at 23.57. From there they fly south-east to the target near Ommen, where they drop the two agents shortly after midnight. They return to Meppel, retracing their outward route, dropping leaflets along their homeward route from 100 feet up — only possible over Holland!

The story of Lauwers and Taconis is too well-known for me to repeat in detail. Lauwers was captured in March 1942 at his set, and was forced to transmit. He used his security-check, but this was ignored by SOE’s Dutch section, which transmitted details of agents to be parachuted. These were met by Major Herman Giskes of the Abwehr and his team. Soon Giskes had lured several agents and their W/T sets to Holland; in essence, he came to run SOE’s activities in Holland until he tired of the game in 1944. The RAF had ceased operations to Holland several months before, due to unreasonable losses.

I recommend reading MRD Foot’s ‘SOE in the Low Countries’ and Leo Marks’s ‘Between Silk and Cyanide’ for the British side of the story, and Herman Giskes’ ‘Operation North Pole’ for the German Abwehr’s side of the story. (Early editions of the Giskes book may also have Huub Lauwers’ own account in an appendix.) Giskes was a highly-experienced operator: before his posting to the Netherlands in October 1941 he’d had considerable success in Paris by infiltrating British-sponsored intelligence organisations.

Operation BULLSEYE (Yugoslavia)

On the morning of the 7th the submarines have arrived in Malta — probably sneaking in during the previous night — with the equipment for Jackson and Austin to drop over Yugoslavia. Jackson attends a morning conference chaired by the SASO, with two Army officers, the two experienced Serbian pilots who are to act as navigation guides, the officer i/c/ the Wellington Flight. The Serbian pilots claim that the winds in the mountains at this time of year make the operation too hazardous by night, and the Wellington Flight commander states that the pinpoints would be impossible to find. A signal was to be sent to the Air Ministry saying that any attempt would be made by day.

Only two containers are ready for dropping. Jackson has three crew off sick. Austin thinks a night attempt is feasible: he volunteers to make an attempt that night, and takes Jackson’s Z9158 up for a test flight at 11.00. He takes off for Yugoslavia at 21.50, and sets course for his first turning-point at Saseno (Sazan) Island, at the entrance to the Adriatic. The next pinpoint is at Cap Bodoni (Cape of Rodon), on the coast further north. From there he heads inland to Mitrovice, in modern-day Kosovo. Cacac is the final pinpoint, with the target in the nearby hills to the north-east.

In the event the weather is fine, with isolated cloud over the sea up to 6,500 feet. Austin flies at 10,000 feet to keep well above any high ground. The three or four signal-fires are clearly visible. Austin signals with the letter ‘R’, which is returned, and several more fires are lit. A green flare is fired from some fires in the form of a cross indicating the wind-direction. At 02.56 the containers are dropped from 3,600 feet to keep the Whitley well above the terrain; at this distance from base their instrument-height may be considerably inaccurate. The rear gunner sees a parachute open.

Austin and his crew immediately make their return to Luqa, arriving at 07.15, and they land 25 minutes later.

Operation RUCTION

RUCTION is the first operation to Poland carried out by an all-Polish crew, so there is a lot riding on it. General Sikorski has pushed hard for the Polish Home Army and underground to be supplied from the air by Polish crews. The aircraft are still British, but there is no doubt that, had Sikorski not agitated strongly for four-engined aircraft, 138 Squadron could have whistled in vain for the Halifax. The bomber is still very new: so far only No. 35 Squadron had been equipped with the type. On 23rd October the Poles have been sent to Linton-on-Ouse for three days’ Halifax conversion-training.

The agents are: Capt. Niemir Stanislaw Bidzinski (ZIEGE), 2/Lt Napoleon Segieda (WERA), and Lt Jan Piwnik (PONURY). There is no operation report on RUCTION, because the crew deliberately crash-lands in Sweden, near Tormelilla. Their version is that they have dropped their agents over Poland when the hydraulic system fails and the undercarriage is lowered. The crew cannot raise it. By now over Denmark, the crew realise that, with the undercart locked down there is no prospect of the Halifax making it back across the North Sea, so they turn towards neutral Sweden, and crash-land. The crew is taken into custody by the Swedish authorities, and they are eventually repatriated to the UK.

W/Cdr Farley’s comments on the operation, contained in an exasperated letter to the Air Ministry after another operation to Poland in January, is revealing:

It has now been established that the loss of the first aircraft was due to mishandling. Colonel Rudowski (sic), who accompanied the crew against orders, did not fully understand the undercarriage system. They have stated that they could not raise the undercarriage as there was no emergency hand pump. There is, of course, a hand pump and the fluid could have been lost only by leaving the selector in the “up” position instead of the “neutral” position during the flight.

As the Poles’ Commanding Officer, Farley has every right to enquire why one of his squadron’s rare and precious Halifaxes has come to a sticky end on its first operation. Though at the time of writing he has yet to fly the Halifax on operations, he will have familiarised himself with his squadron’s aircraft. He also has an experienced Halifax pilot in Sqn Ldr Ron Hockey, who has (by the time Farley writes this report) flown the ANTHROPOID operation at the end of December, and has a thorough knowledge of the Halifax’s controls and systems.

In his ‘Poland, SOE and the Allies’, Josef Garlinksi does not mention this episode, despite its importance.

Sources
SAGA, BRICK, FITZROY

TNA AIR 40/2579: Lysander Operations, 419 Flight & 138 Squadron.

CATARRH

TNA AIR 20/8334, Encl. 104A

BULLSEYE

TNA AIR20/8334, Encls 97A, 103A

RUCTION

TNA AIR 2/5203, Farley letter to DDI2 dated 13 January 1942.