When war broke out in 1939 my father was living with his mother and sister in the Victoria Dock Road in London and working at the Woolwich Arsenal on the
other side of the river. He was involved in the design of bakelite hand grenades. Some time in 1940 their house was destroyed during an enemy raid on
the docks and after a short while they managed to find new accommodation in Ealing in west London. While there his work at the Arsenal was transferred to
Green Street Green, south of Bromley in Kent to where he commuted by train every day. Soon after that his Mother opened their door in Ealing to be confronted by
a policeman accusing him of dodging the call up draft. Designing hand grenades was of course a reserved occupation which excluded him from military call up but
he decided to join up anyway and found himself in the RAF at Cardington some time during 1940.
As an engineer Dad was assigned to aircraft maintenance and posted to
Tempsford in Bedfordshire and was billeted in nearby Potton with
Mr. & Mrs. Dennis in their house on
Bury Hill (number 52). After Dad was
married in 1942 this kindly couple invited him to bring his new wife to live
with them. I have been told that no one in Potton knew what was going on at
Tempsford but noticed that most activity took place when the moon was full. It
was of course 138 Squadron of Special Operations Executive which became known as
Moon Squadron.
Dad never spoke of what went on there and to my regret I never pressed him for
information. He did however pay 13/6d in November 1956 for a book called ’
Moon Squadron’ by
Jerrard Tickell which told the story of 138 Squadron and I lost no time in
reading it. The book related how spies and supplies were landed and dropped
into enemy occupied territories by Lysander aircraft which were were able to use any
short and flat open space as a landing strip. However Dad worked on the
squadron’s Halifaxes and he studied aeronautical engineering to qualify as an
officer but continued to be involved with the bombers. I still have his
handwritten notes. As a child if I was bought a model aeroplane it was
invariably a model of a Halifax. Apart from references to being in India with
Halifaxes at the end of the European war and for some time beyond dropping food
and other supplies and despite the presence of the book in the house, very
little was ever again said about 138 Squadron.
In 1987 we knew that Dad was dying and I took him out by car at weekends if he
was well enough. One day we called in at the aviation museum at Tangmere which
at the time was little more than a couple of corrugated iron sheds filled with a
variety of aircraft artifacts and memorabilia. One of them was a badly broken
Rolls Royce Merlin engine that had been dug from the ground after a Spitfire
crash. I knew that Dad had worked on Merlin engines and must have been very
proud of them for I recall that at a young age he told me it was the first
engine to develop more horsepower than it weighed in pounds. On the side of the
damaged Merlin engine was a panel which was inscribed with a notice to the
effect that only Rolls Royce authorized personnel were to remove it. Dad
muttered something about there being times when such things had to be ignored
and the following story emerged.
In early November 1942, towards the end of Montgomery’s campaign in North
Africa, he said that there was an urgent need for small arms and ammunition to be
ferried to Egypt. Nine Halifaxes suitably loaded flew from Tempsford in three
groups of three. Each group had the normal flight crew and because the flight
was to be such an unusual one each group carried an engineering officer, a
munitions expert, and a third whose responsibility I have unfortunately
forgotten, one in each aeroplane. Dad was obviously the engineer for his group
of three ’planes.
They flew directly over France to Malta where they stopped for at least one
night. I remember Dad saying that they thought it easiest to sleep on board the
Halifaxes but the local authorities forbade it and after a night’s sleep they
flew on to Cairo where their load was safely delivered. For the return journey
they loaded with mail and took off bound for Gibraltar. At some point in the
journey the flight crew called Dad forward to look at the instrumentation of one
engine and he instructed them to shut it down. They continued on their journey
but another engine failed and all the mail had to be thrown into the sea while
they struggled to keep aloft long enough to reach the north African coast.
Finding themselves stuck in a desert with two failed and two failing engines,
with little food and no defences was an unfortunate predicament and there was
nothing that could be usefully done apart from trying to find out what had gone
wrong. When dismantled the engines were found to have sucked in a great deal of
sand. This was eventually cleared out but having lost all the oil the engines
were still not a lot of use.
After a few more days an army came into view and fortunately it was American rather
than German. They were apparently in awe of such a large aeroplane stuck in the
desert, but they were army rather than U.S.A.F. so perhaps that is not too
surprising. Fortunately they had sufficient fuel and oil to replenish the
Halifax and it was able to take off and head off around the Bay of Biscay and
home.
Apparently the Polish crew were absolutely ecstatic about their achievement and
as Land’s End came into view they dived at it and continued the flight back to
Bedfordshire at tree top height. When they got near home they circled Potton and
Mum then added to the story by saying that she was in the garden at Bury Hill
hanging out the washing when the Halifax circled around at low level and she
knew it had to be Dad’s after an absence of three weeks.
I believe Dad went on to say that only one other Halifax returned but,
if I remember correctly, two more crews managed to get home by overland routes.
The return home was in mid December and he was given leave to recover.
Christmas was a very good one that year because the Americans had not only
stocked the Halifax with fuel and oil but also lots of food and fruit which
wasn’t easily available back in wartime Britain. It is now precisely 60 years
from when, with the one notable exception, those Halifaxes were lost but I have
never been able to find any reference to them. However it most certainly
happened because as far as I am aware Dad never said anything that wasn’t the
total truth.
Notes provided by
Malcolm Knight, 30 November 2003.