Night Raid
Page 34
^6
IWM Sound: 27176, Geoffrey Alan Osborn interviewed in 2005.
^7
Frost, A Drop Too Many, p. 41.
^8
Pears later became part of Unilever, which now owns the painting and have loaned it to the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Liverpool where it is on display.
^9
Airborne: 4D2 2.2.2, Commander F.N. Cook, private memoir of Operation Biting.
^10
IWM Sound: 16727, Rev John Leonard Brooker interviewed 9 May 1996.
^11
IWM Sound: 20365, Eric John Gould interviewed 17 June 2000.
^12
IWM Sound: 17182, John Timothy interviewed 18 December 1996; Grenville and Timothy, Tim’s Tale, p. 16.
Chapter 12 – Volunteers for Danger
^1
This account is partly taken from Flight Sergeant’s Cox report on Operation Biting in Airborne: 4D2 2.2.1, and partly from George Millar, The Bruneval Raid, pp. 33ff, based on an interview with Cox carried out in the 1970s.
^2
Jones, Most Secret War, pp. 237–8.
^3
Niall Cherry, Striking Back, p. 199.
^4
Latham and Stobbs, Pioneers of Radar, pp. 43ff.
^5
Millar, The Bruneval Raid, p. 36, quoting a letter from Frost.
^6
See the entry on Peter Nagel in the Jewish Virtual Library at http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/ww2/Peter_Nagel.html The quote is from an interview with Nagel’s daughter.
^7
Frost, A Drop Too Many, p. 42.
Chapter 13 – The Plan
^1
Max Arthur, Men of the Red Beret, p. 22; interview with John Frost in 1989.
^2
Airborne: 4D2 2.2.1, ‘Operational Orders for Operation Biting’.
^3
NA: AIR 39/43.
^4
The container of tools that was parachuted separately for the dismantling of the Würzburg consisted of the following: ‘No. 2 Bag – 1 Claw hammer/1 Cold chisel/1 Hacksaw and spare blade/1 large screwdriver/1 long thin screwdriver/1 comb spanner/1 pair end cutting spanners/1 pair side cutting spanners/2 pairs rubber gloves/1 roll copper wire/1 head torch/2 hand torches/1 shifting spanner with 6 inch handle.’ See NA: AIR 32/8.
^5
Airborne: 4D2 2.2.2, Commander F.N. Cook, private memoir of Operation Biting.
^6
NA: AIR 39/43, Cox’s report.
^7
One of the models still exists and is on display in the Airborne Assault Museum at the Imperial War Museum, Duxford.
^8
Downing, Spies in the Sky, pp. 118–19, 259–60.
Chapter 14 – The Defenders
^1
NA: AIR 32/8, Operation Biting: Airborne Division: Operation Order No. 1.
^2
NA: AIR 32/8, Operation Biting: Airborne Division: Operation Order No. 1, Appendix I.
^3
Frost, A Drop Too Many, p. 44.
Chapter 15 – The Drop
^1
The Germans did not have this facility for meteorological prediction and so weather forecasting became an issue surrounded by security during the war. For this reason the BBC did not transmit weather reports on the radio and the newspapers did not carry weather forecasts, as it was thought they would give useful information to the enemy.
^2
Airborne: 4D2 2.2.2, Commander F.N. Cook, private memoir of Operation Biting.
^3
Frost, A Drop Too Many, pp. 47–8.
^4
Airborne: 4D2 2.2.1, A.R. Humphreys, Reuters’ correspondent on Prinz Albert, in Operation Biting – Personal Accounts.
^5
Frost, A Drop Too Many, p. 48.
^6
Frost, A Drop Too Many, p. 49.
^7
NA: AIR 32/8.
^8
NA: AIR 32/8, Appendix A.
^9
RAF: RAF Journal Vol. 2 No. 5, 1944, p. 159.
^10
NA: WO 106/4133, Biting – Personal Accounts.
^11
Guardian, 2 March 1942.
^12
Hilary St George Saunders, The Red Beret, p. 65.
^13
Airborne: 4D2 2.2.1, Lieutenant Charteris Personal Report.
^14
Airborne: 4D2 2.2.1, Lieutenant Charteris Personal Report.
^15
IWM Sound: 18780.
Chapter 16 – Attack
^1
Airborne: 4D2 2.2.1, Lieutenant Charteris Personal Report.
^2
Frost, A Drop Too Many, p. 51.
^3
NA: DEFE 2/101, Lieutenant Young Personal Report.
^4
RAF: RAF Journal Vol. 2 No. 5, p. 160.
^5
Cherry, Striking Back, p. 212.
^6
Airborne: 4D2 2.2.1, Flight Sergeant Cox Personal Report.
Chapter 17 – Fire Fight
^1
Airborne: 4D2 2.2.2, Commander F.N. Cook, private memoir of Operation Biting.
^2
IWM Sound: 20365.
^3
Airborne: 4D2 2.2.1, Lieutenant Charteris Personal Report.
^4
IWM Sound: 29606.
^5
Airborne: 4D2 2.2.1, Lieutenant Charteris Personal Report.
^6
Literally this means the ‘Deer’s Antlers’ and is an old cry of the Mackenzie clan inherited by the Seaforth Highlanders in the eighteenth century when the Mackenzies first raised the regiment.
^7
IWM Sound: 29606.
^8
Saunders, The Red Beret, p. 68.
Chapter 18 – The Ruddy Navy
^1
Airborne: 4D2 2.2.1, Flight Sergeant Cox Personal Report.
^2
IWM Sound: 17182
^3
Airborne: 4D2 2.2.1, Flight Sergeant Cox Personal Report.
^4
Airborne: 4D2 2.2.1, Major Frost Personal Report; Frost, A Drop Too Many, pp. 53–4
^5
Frost, A Drop Too Many, p. 54.
^6
Airborne: 4D2 2.2.1, Major Frost Personal Report.
^7
IWM Sound: 18780.
^8
IWM Sound: 20365.
^9
Reminiscence by Donald Preist in Latham and Stobbs, Pioneers of Radar, p. 46.
^10
They are both buried in the Commonwealth War Graves cemetery at Ste Marie, Le Havre.
^11
IWM Sound: 18780.
^12
Airborne: 4D2 2.2.2, Commander F.N. Cook, private memoir on Operation Biting.
^13
Airborne: 4D2 2.2.1, A.R. Humphreys Personal Report.
^14
Frost, A Drop Too Many, p. 55.
^15
Alan Humphreys’ reports were picked out by Newspaper World on 9 January 1943 as one of three sets of reports by Reuters journalists deserving special praise – the other two were Harold King for his reports from Moscow and Arthur Oakeshott for his account from the Arctic convoys in 1942. See Graham Storey, Reuters’ Century, pp. 225–6.
Chapter 19 – Aftermath
^1
Alain Millet, Raid de Bruneval, pp. 278–80.
^2
Millet, Raid de Bruneval, pp. 281–6.
^3
Millet, Raid de Bruneval, pp. 287–97.
^4
Today it is known as Lambinowice and is the site of the Central National Prisoner Museum.
^5
Airborne: 4D2 2.2.2; also quoted in Cherry, Striking Back, pp. 380–2.
^6
Frost, A Drop Too Many, pp. 56–8.
Chapter 20 – Good News
^1
There were 23,000 households in the south of Britain with TV sets in September 1939. It took a long time for television to establish itself as
a popular cultural form in the UK when it was re-established after the war. Even at the time of the London Olympics in 1948 only about 40,000 households in the Home Counties had sets and could pick up the signal from Wembley. The Coronation of 1953 gave a huge boost to the sale of television sets, but television only really became a mass popular pursuit with the coming of ITV, which rolled out across the nation from 1955 onwards.
^2
Asa Briggs, The War of Words, pp. 141, 187. By 1942, 9,019,000 radio licences had been issued (Briggs, The War of Words, p. 666) and in most homes two to three people gathered around the wireless for the main evening news.
^3
Richard Havers, Here is the News, pp. 116–17.
^4
Briggs, The War of Words, pp. 75–84.
^5
Havers, Here is the News, p. 72.
^6
BBC WAC: HNB 28.2.42, 1 p.m. News.
^7
BBC WAC: HNB 28.2.42, 1 p.m. News, p. 1. Each news item was typed on separate pages and many include handwritten approvals from the MoI controllers.
^8
BBC WAC: HNB 28.2.42, 6 p.m. News, p. 1.
^9
BBC WAC: HNB 28.2.42, Midnight News, p. 2.
^10
The BBC began the war broadcasting in seven languages and ended it broadcasting in forty-five.
^11
Renault, The Silent Company, p. 272.
^12
Nicholas Wilkinson, Secrecy and the Media, pp.180ff.
^13
Sunday Times, 1 March 1942.
^14
Observer, 1 March 1942.
^15
Guardian, 2 March 1942.
^16
Daily Sketch, 7 March 1942.
^17
IWM Sound: 18780.
^18
IWM Sound: 29606.
^19
IWM Sound: 18780.
^20
Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 171.
^21
In Which We Serve, produced, directed, written and music composed by Noel Coward, co-directed by David Lean in his directorial debut; photography by Ronald Neame; featuring Noel Coward as Captain Kinross, Celia Johnson as his wife, Bernard Miles as Chief Petty Officer Hardy and John Mills as Ordinary Seaman Blake. Richard Attenborough makes his first screen appearance as a stoker who panics and runs away from his post. Two Cities Films, 1942; available on DVD through ITV Video.
^22
IWM Film: BEY 222/01 and 02.
^23
Quoted in Nicholas Pronay, ‘The Newsreels: The illusion of actuality’ in Paul Smith (ed.), The Historian and Film, p. 113.
^24
See the British Universities Film and Video Council News on Screen database.
^25
Gaumont British News is now controlled by ITN Source and the newsreel can be seen at http://www.itnsource.com/shotlist/BHC_RTV/1942/03/05/BGU408200005/?s=bruneval&st=0&pn=1
^26
IWM Film: War Pictorial News, Issue 052, April 1942.
^27
School for Secrets, produced by George H. Brown and Peter Ustinov; written and directed by Peter Ustinov; starring Ralph Richardson, Richard Attenborough, David Tomlinson and John Laurie. Two Cities Films, 1946; available on DVD through Simply Home Entertainment.
^28
Grenville and Timothy, Tim’s Tale, p. 64.
Chapter 21 – The Scientific War
^1
Jones, Most Secret War, pp. 242–5.
^2
Churchill: R.V. Jones Papers/NCUACS 95.8.00/B.31, Appendix III.
^3
Jones, Most Secret War, p. 244. After the war Jones met General Martini, former head of the Luftwaffe Air Signals and Radar section, who explained this fully to him.
^4
Jones, Most Secret War, p. 245.
^5
Downing, Spies in the Sky, p. 260.
^6
Lovell, Astronomer by Chance, p. 73.
^7
Donald Preist, ‘Memories of the Bruneval Raid’ in Cherry, Striking Back, pp. 387–8.
^8
Jones, Most Secret War, p. 297.
^9
Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich, pp. 283–4. For the detailed damage assessment report after the raid, see Downing, Spies in the Sky, pp. 204–5.
^10
Based on figures for the number of sorties from May 1942 to early July 1943 in Hastings, Bomber Command, Appendix A, pp. 426–7, with an average crew of seven men in a Halifax, Stirling or Lancaster heavy bomber.
^11
Buderi, The Invention that Changed the World, pp. 208–9; Jones, Most Secret War, p. 386.
Epilogue
^1
There was some argument about whether Bruneval qualified when the Parachute Regiment was first allocated its battle honours in 1956. The officer distributing the honours thought the regiment had proposed too many and needed to cut back its list. He suggested Bruneval ‘was only a small scale raid’ and he was ‘doubtful whether it should be included’. Airborne: Misc: Letter Lt General Lathbury to Col Coxen, 2 July 1956. Nevertheless, the Parachute Regiment insisted, and so it was included and is still held with great pride.
^2
Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 170.
^3
IWM Film: LOC 60. John Hughes-Hallett spoke these words in an interview for the Rediffusion Television series The Life and Times of Mountbatten (1969), Episode 5 ‘United We Conquer’; also quoted in Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 170.
^4
Mountbatten continued his naval career and went on to become First Sea Lord in the late 1950s and Head of the Defence Staff in the 1960s. He was assassinated by the IRA while on holiday boating off Mullaghmore on the Irish coast in 1979.
^5
Otway, Airborne Forces, p. 80.
^6
Quoted in Arthur, Men of the Red Beret, p. 65.
^7
Frost, A Drop Too Many, p. 185.
^8
For example Martin Middlebrook, Arnhem 1944: The Airborne Battle; William Buckingham, Arnhem 1944; Robert Kershaw, It Never Snows in September: The German View of Market Garden and the Battle of Arnhem, September 1944; Lloyd Clark, Arnhem: Jumping the Rhine 1944 and 1945, and many others.
^9
Downing, Spies in the Sky, pp. 318–19.
^10
Frost, A Drop Too Many, p. 253; the story was that a sapper who had been captured by the Germans was sent back to Frost with the suggestion he should meet the German commander to negotiate the surrender of the Paras. The sapper was Sergeant Halliwell, who had helped with the dismantling of the Würzberg radar at Bruneval. Halliwell said he did not want to have to go back and tell the SS commander to ‘go to hell’ and so Frost let him remain, reckoning that if he never returned the Germans would get the message that the Paras were not ready to surrender.
^11
IWM Sound: 17182; Grenville and Timothy, Tim’s Tale, pp. 47–63.
^12
A Bridge Too Far, directed by Richard Attenborough; written by William Goldman based on the book by Cornelius Ryan; produced by Joseph Levine; starring Dirk Bogarde, James Caan, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Edward Fox, Anthony Hopkins, Gene Hackman, Hardy Krüger, Laurence Olivier, Robert Redford and Maximilian Schell. A Joseph E. Levine Production for United Artists, 1977.
^13
Frost, A Drop Too Many, pp. 253–5.
^14
See: http://www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de
^15
Charles Cox died in 1995.
^16
John Timothy died in 2011.
^17
John Ross died in 1993.
^18
John Frost died in 1993.
^19
A.J.P. Taylor, English History 1914–1945, p. 392.
^20
R.V. Jones died in 1997.
^21
Lovell, Astronomer by Chance, pp. 105ff; Bernard Lovell died in 2012.
^22
<
br /> Frank Whittle, the inventor of the jet engine, was another. The British government had given him an award of £100,000 but he preferred to spend most of his time in North America.
^23
Robert Watson-Watt returned to live in Scotland in the 1960s and died in 1973.
Bibliography
Primary Sources – Unpublished