A Special Duty
Page 17
Major Ian Smart
Captain Jack Stephenson
Lieutenant Alan Toley
George McKenna
Corporal Ian Kesterton
Crew of Liberator AL509 of 148 Squadron, lost 3rd December 1943
F/Lt Maurice Passmore RAFVR
WO James Herbert Stevenson Clarke RCAF
F/Lt Eldon Burke Elliott RCAF
F/Lt Harry James Crawford RNZAF
F/Sgt Edwin Archibald Toole RCAF
WO Ralph Edward Hawken RCAF
F/Sgt William Joseph Dowle RAFVR
Chapter 2:
Crew of Halifax JN888 of 624 Squadron, lost 14th July 1944
P/O Leslie Arthur Peers RCAF
F/O Albert John Baythorp RAFVR
Sgt Jack Brooke RAFVR
Sgt Harry Clarke RAFVR
F/O Charles Spencer Goble RAFVR
Sgt James Edward Walsh RAFVR
Sgt William Ronald Wharmby RAFVR
Crew of Halifax HR674 of 148 Squadron, lost 19th October 1943
F/Lt William Ross Forester RAFVR
F/Sgt James Clement Cole RAFVR
F/O Peter Raymond Flyte RAFVR
F/O Francis Jack Hunter RNZAF
F/O Edward Frank Myers RAFVR
Sgt Peter Twiddy RAFVR
F/Sgt Harold Williams RAFVR
SOE Personnel lost 19th October 1943
Captain Alfred Careless RAC
Signalman David William Rockingham RCS
Chapter 3:
SOE SPILLWAY mission personnel lost 1st February 1944
Major G.E. Layzell, South Lancashire Regiment
Crew of Halifax JN959 of 148 Squadron, lost 11th February 1944
F/Sgt Ian McGugan RAAF
F/Sgt Bernard Austin Hough RAAF
F/Sgt Percy Garfield Mann RAAF
F/Sgt Edward George Lee RAAF
F/Sgt Nairne Edwin Plaxton DFM RAF
Sgt James Palmer RAFVR
Sgt Frederick Moses Cyril Henry Harris RAFVR
Crew of Halifax JP292 of 148 Squadron, lost 3/4 July 1944
W/O Charles Thomas Fairweather RAF
F/O John Stanley Brown RCAF
F/Sgt John Easton RAFVR
P/O Allen Haigh RAFVR
F/Sgt Ronald Frederick Houghton RAFVR
F/Sgt Richard Jacques RAFVR
F/Sgt Leonard James Smith RAFVR
Crew of Halifax JP286 of 148 Squadron lost3/4 July 1944
Sqdn Ldr Surray Philip Victor Bird RAFVR
F/O Kenneth Peter Mcleod Cran RAFVR
F/Sgt Peter Lake RAFVR
F/Sgt Arthur Archer Lee RAFVR
P/O Harold Pearson RAF
F/Sgt Ronald Radford RAFVR
W/O Donal David Charles Stewart RCAF
F/Sgt Marcel Tilmont RAFVR
SOE personnel lost December 1944
2nd Lt Alexander Francis Vass
Major Richard Moncrieff Wright R.T.R
Crew of Halifax JP247 of 148 Squadron lost 3/4 July 1944
F/Lt George Raymond Wood RAFVR
F/Sgt James William Hern RAF
Crew of Halifax JP179 of 148 Squadron lost 3/5 July 1944
F/Sgt Evan Ffoulkes Jones RAFVR
F/Sgt John Kennedy RAF
W/O John Phillip Harrison RAFVR
Sgt Thomas William Hugh Tomlinson RAFVR
SOE MULLIGATAWNY mission personnel lost March-July 1944
Maj Mostyn Davies
Sgt J. Walker
Sgt N. Munro
Cpl J.R. Shannon
Sig R.G. Watts
SOE CLARIDGE mission personnel lost July 1944
Maj W.F. Thompson
Crew of Halifax BB444 of 624 Squadron lost 1st February 1944
F/Sgt E.D.S. Tennant RAAF
F/O Stanley RAFVR
Sgt J.L. Devine RAFVR
F/Sgt D.H. Potter RAAF
Sgt F.C.R. Burlefinger RAFVR
Sgt G.Gardner RAFVR
Chapter 4:
Crew of Halifax HR660 of 148 Squadron, lost 3rd March, 1944
F/Lt James Harold Botham RAFVR
F/Sgt John Walter Sole RAFVR
W/O John Caldwell Calhoun RCAF
F/O Henry George Lancaster RAFVR
Sgt William Ernest Thurnall RAFVR
Chapter 8:
Crew of Halifax JP162 of 148 Squadron, lost 4/5 August, 1944
F/Lt James Girvan McCall RAFVR
Sgt Clifford Aspinall RAFVR
Sgt John Frederick Cairney Rae RAFVR
APPENDIX 5
The following crewmembers flew at least one operational sortie with the Storey crew:
F/Sgt T. Storey
Pilot
F/Sgt E. Elkington-Smith
Bomb Aimer
W/O O.W. Congdon
Navigator
Sgt W. G. Davis
Wireless Operator
Sgt C.J. Keen
Flight Engineer
Sgt J.C. Hughes
Rear Gunner
Sgt P. Stradling
Despatcher
Sgt P. Crosland
Bomb Aimer
F/O W.W. Nichol
Navigator
Sgt G. Fidler
Despatcher
Sgt W. Woolliscroft
Flight Engineer
LAC Martin
Flight Engineer
Sgt N.A. Robertson
Bomb Aimer
Sgt T.R. Lawman
Navigator
Sgt H.W. Humphreys
not known
Sgt D. H. Crockford
Navigator
F/O W.A.Fullar
Bomb Aimer
Sgt W.M. Tilton
not known
F/O H. O’Neill
not known
F/Sgt R. Chapman
not known
Sgt M. Tilmont
Rear Gunner
F/Sgt R. Lee
Navigator
The crew flew almost all their early sorties in Halifax JN888, the aircraft they had flown to North Africa from the United Kingdom. They personalised the nose of this aircraft with artwork and the name RITA. After the move to Brindisi in January 1944, they flew a variety of aircraft, including JN888, until she went to Algeria for an engine change at the end of March 1944. The following is a list of aircraft flown by the Storey crew with 148 Squadron:
JN888
BB445
JN925
JN896
BB381
BB318
HR671
BB431
BB338
JP224 (final flight)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Eddie Elkington-Smith, Second Pilot and Navigator, for the written accounts and logbook pages which he gave to the family and to Charles Keen, Flight Engineer, who travelled from Brighton to Lancaster in 2003 to talk to my family about the crew and their time with 148 Special Duty Squadron. Wireless Operator Walter Davis, who I had the privilege to meet in 2013, his daughter Anne Black and granddaughter Sharon Spencer contributed a wealth of interesting material to my project, including a memoir, photographs, M.I.9 Reports and access to Walter’s Flying logbook. Mike Bedford-Stradling, son of Patrick Stradling, Air Gunner and Despatcher, has been enormously helpful and generous with his father’s archive of material and lastly my mother, Rita, who preserved letters, photographs and memories over the years, which have been of great value to me.
Whilst researching the material for this book, I found my way to the Operation Dark of the Moon website, which was set up by Terry Maker for the research of 148 Squadron, and other Special Duty Squadrons, during the Second World War. Members of this forum have provided me with material, given me an insight into the activities of the Squadron and perhaps most of all, provided tremendous support and encouragement. In particular I would like to mention Terry Maker, Steve Andrews, Bill Pogson, Rosemary Edmeads, Steve Alves, Adriano Silva Baumgartner, Julie Fairweather, Pat Atkins, Kleon Ionnidis, Steven Horsfield, Piotr Hodyra and Larry Toft. La
rry has been guide and mentor to me throughout the process of this book and his familiarity with the technique of flying a Halifax and knowledge of 148 Squadron has given authenticity to the flight sections. His wealth of experience as a World War II Special Duty Pilot has been both practically invaluable and emotionally inspirational. Rosemary Edmeads and I have been on a parallel course with our writing projects and she has supported and helped me unreservedly. Don Kaiser was particularly helpful when I needed an authentic photograph of the 1944 eruption of Vesuvius and allowed me to use one from his website. A further source of invaluable information has been the Carpetbagger Aviation Museum and in particular the database of Aircraft lost on Allied Force’s Special Duty Operations & Associated Roll of Honour kept and updated by Roy Tebbutt.
I must thank The National Archives at Kew for providing such an excellent research facility. Some of the most productive and enjoyable days were spent in the Reader’s room, at a comfortable desk by the window, working my way through files. The joy of finding a piece of paper linking one of my father’s flights to the SOE personnel he carried, cannot be described. The research process opened my eyes to the amount of work that goes into producing a factual, historical account and my gratitude to the authors of some of the books I relied on heavily, is boundless. In some cases, the books provided ‘scene-setting’ information or historical context and in other cases, very specific information which allowed me to make the link between operations in the air and groups on the ground. I met Graham Pitchfork, author of Shot Down and on the Run shortly before I began to write this story and found his book invaluable and his enthusiasm motivational to the point that I wanted to do something myself. I am also particularly grateful to David Stafford for responding to my plea for information on Italian drop zones and to Richard Clogg for information on the Allied Military Mission in Greece. Jonathan Walker gave me very useful information on the Polish Resistance Groups and Alan Ogden steered me towards some relevant TNA files and also gave me sound advice on taking photographs of the pages after my disastrous first attempts. Roderick Bailey, whose book The Wildest Province became a ‘bible’ for me when writing about Albanian Operations not only helped enormously but was very supportive at a time when I needed it! Towards the end of this project, I was delighted to be able to make contact with Stanislaw Jankowski, author of Ostatni Lot Halifaxa, the definitive work on the loss of Halifax JP224, and he not only offered to check my ‘Polish’ Chapters for me, which has given me great peace of mind, but wrote an Afterword for this book. I am immensely grateful to him and the authors of the above-mentioned books who took the time to help me.
I found the Air Historical Branch of the RAF particularly helpful and I would like to thank Mike Hatch and Flight Lieutenant Hudson for taking the time to find specific information which was important for my story. Irena Czernichowska of Stanford University Hoover Institute managed to find a letter my father had written to Stanislaw Mikolajczyk in 1947 amongst the Mikolajczyk papers, held by the Institute and I am very grateful to her for that. Svetlana Kostyleva, also of Stanford, copied the diary of Brigadier Hill for me and Grzyna Wadas of the Bibliotek, Nowa Sarzyna provided me with archive material pertaining to the Halifax crash. Thank you Alison McCulloch of Carlisle Grammar School for not only unearthing Tom Storey’s school report with its credit in ‘German’, but also for finding a photograph of young Tom in the School Cricket Team! Greg Kusiak managed to pinpoint for me the exact spot where Halifax JP224 crashed and also gave me links to a Polish television documentary based on the last flight of this aircraft, all of which enabled me to ‘home in’ on the relevant area to research. It was Greg who put me in touch with Edward Kak from the village of Tarnogora, which resulted in our visit there in 2013. I would also like to thank Dawid Sowa for alerting me to the fact that a diary existed, written by Bronislaw Kaminski, detailing events as they happened on the ground at the time of the Halifax crash. Pawel Cholewa, the grandson of Kaminski, subsequently copied all the relevant pages for me and I am immensely grateful for that priceless information. Thanks also to Jakub Kędzior, Project Manager of the VeroLing Agency for translating those thirty five handwritten pages so perfectly and to Renata Elgalal for assistance with Polish documents.
For having the patience to read through early chapters of this book and coming up with excellent suggestions I would like to thank Polly Morland, Peter Gwillim, Charles Morland and Mike Bedford-Stradling and for checking every chapter, as the book developed, I can only say sincere and heartfelt thanks to Wayne Elkin and Larry Toft. Wayne read every word with painstaking care and kept the story grounded by curbing my ‘flights of fancy’ and Larry took the same care with the flying sequences, making sure that I presented those aspects of the story as accurately as possible. I would also like to thank Nicholas Morland, who advised on flying matters and provided me with a copy of Pilot and Flight Engineer’s Notes for the Halifax. My sisters, Pat Bowskill and Susan Hayhurst have consistently helped by jogging my memory and adding anecdotes of their own and my mother, Rita has been extremely generous with her time and support.
When it came to checking the final manuscript, I was very grateful to Andrea and Terry Reeves, for reading it through, picking up inconsistencies and making suggestions. I received my first ‘review’ from Andrea and will not forget her thoughtful and generous words. Both Terry and Andrea have given me invaluable advice throughout the process of this work, particularly when it came to the minefield of self-publishing. Jo Ashley was a great help during the final pre-publishing week by doing a last read-through for me and lastly, two people I trust implicitly with my work are my daughters, Rachel Arey and Maxine Morland. They have worked their way through the manuscript for me; Rachel to advise on final presentation and Maxine to do the professional job of editing and copy proofing. They have been an incredible source of inspiration for me and I consider myself very lucky to have had such unstinting support and practical help.
Our trip to Poland in April 2013 was the highlight of this project and for the welcome we received and the hospitality offered I would like to thank Edward, Barbara, Joanna and Lukasz Kak, Tadeusz and Zofia Kak, Piotr and Margaret Kak, Greg Kusiak, Piotr Galdys, Bronislaw Smola, Damien Majkut, Bronislaw Sowa, Jan Kido, Jerzy Paul, Danuta Pinderska, Violetta Fimiarz and the staff and pupils of Tarnogora Primary School.
Lastly I must thank Paul Lashmar who not only provided me with copies of his own research, but continued to advise and support me throughout the process of writing this book. A busy journalist, lecturer and film maker, he made the time to help me and I am very grateful for that.
NOTES
Chapter 1
i. Cypher message 8th Oct 1943, Cairo to MONKEYWRENCH, WO202/331.
ii. Cypher message 10th Oct 1943, Cairo to MONKEYWRENCH, WO202/331.
iii. Cypher message 21st Oct 1943, MONKEYWRENCH to Cairo, WO202/331.
iv. Our Man in Yugoslavia, Sebastian Ritchie, Frank Cass Publishers 2004, pages 68 & 75.
v. My Grandad’s Story, Walter Davis and Sharon Spencer, 2007 personal recollections.
vi. The Wildest Province by Roderick Bailey, Vintage 2009. Reproduced by permission of The Random House Group Limited, page 225.
vii. Insight on this particular incident provided by Larry Toft, of 148 Squadron.
viii. Illyrian Adventure, Brigadier ‘Trotsky’ Davies, Bodley Head, 1952, Page 70.
ix. Report by Major McAdam on activities 16th May 1943-19th November 1944, HS5/692.
x. Recorded account by Charles Keen 2003.
xi. Recorded account by Charles Keen 2003.
xii. Storey family letter archive.
xiii. Information on the loss of Peter Crosland taken from squadron records and information supplied by Flight Lieutenant M. Hudson of the Air Historical Branch (RAF) in personal correspondence.
xiv. My Grandad’s Story, Walter Davis and Sharon Spencer 2007, personal recollections.
xv. ORB Appendices November 1943 page 37, AIR27/998.
xvi. Speech to
the House of Commons 22nd February, 1944.
Special Note:
Unless otherwise stated, all flight and crew information was sourced from:
148 Operations Record Book, October & November 1943, AIR27/995.
148 Sortie Reports (RAF form 441A), AIR23/1443.
Additional information on operations and Squadron activities sourced from:
148 Operations Record Book Summary, October & November 1943, AIR27/995.
Information on lost aircraft and crews either sourced or confirmed with the help of:
Harrington Aviation Museum Society. Listing of Allied aircraft lost on Special Duty Operations. www.harringtonmuseum.org.uk.
Much of the piecing together of the Albania supply and personnel drops was done with the help of Roderick Bailey’s Book, The Wildest Province, Vintage 2009 (reproduced by permission of The Random House Group Limited) in conjunction with 148 operational records as mentioned above. I have not marked every source individually. Suffice to say, I could not have matched personnel with specific flights without the help of this particular book. I have also been grateful to Walter Davis and Sharon Spencer for allowing me to use the personal recollections of Walter Davis.
Chapter 2
i. Operation Autonomous, Ivor Porter, Chatto & Windus 1989, Chapter 11.
ii. Operation Autonomous, Ivor Porter, Chatto & Windus 1989, Chapter 11.
iii. Through Hitler’s Back Door, Alan Ogden, Pen & Sword Books 2010, pages 249-63.
iv. Operation Autonomous, Ivor Porter, Chatto & Windus, Page 102.
v. RAF form 441A AIR49/223.
vi. Recorded account by Charles Keen, 2003.
vii. Conditions in Zervas-held territory in Greece by D.J. Wallace, British Reports on Greece 1943-44.
viii. Report of activities in Greece, T/Sgt Spiros Kaleyias, HS5/697.
ix. Venture into Greece, Nicholas Hammond DSO, William Kimber, 1983, chapter 8.