RAF Special Operations

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The King and Queen visiting RAF Tempsford November 1943
[B H Atkins]

When eighteen year-old Sergeant Les Silver and the rest of his crew arrived at the quiet airfield of Tempsford, near Bedford, none of them had any idea they would be carrying out Special Duties operations. They had trained on four-engine Halifax bombers and assumed that once they'd finished their heavy bomber conversion course at Dishforth in Yorkshire, they would be going on bomber missions over Nazi-occupied Europe.

The aircraft dotted around the airfield, however, should have given them a clue that Tempsford was no ordinary bomber station. As well as a few Halifaxes, there were also twin-engine Wellingtons, Hudsons and ageing Whitleys, and most telling of all, a number of Lysanders, high-winged and robust monoplanes, ideal for landing in a tight spot but hopeless for carrying bombs. Soon after their arrival, Les and his crew were told they would be joining 161 Squadron and began low-level flying training. 'Normally bombers were operating at 18,000 to 25,000 feet,' says Les, 'but we were flying at 1,000 to 1,200 feet, below radar levels.'¹ This was no easy matter, especially at night, and required particular concentration on the part of the pilot and navigator.

Tom Smith was also with 161 Squadron, a Flight Engineer, and like Les, had arrived at Tempsford with no understanding of what lay in store for him and his crew, and was somewhat perplexed when they were cryptically warned they would not be needing an oxygen mask. Another Tempsford veteran, Rowland Peake, arrived at Tempsford in May 1944 along with twenty-seven other newly-trained aircrew, making up four more Halifax crews. Like Les and Tom, he had thought they would soon be taking part in bombing raids, so was surprised to discover they were now part of 138 Squadron and that like 161, they would be carrying out clandestine operations over Occupied Europe. In a lecture given by the CO, Rowland and the other new aircrew were given a brief introduction to the kind of work they would be doing. The task of the two Tempsford squadrons, they were told, was to carry out operations in support of SOE - Special Operations Executive - and would involve delivering arms, equipment and even agents. Secrecy, they were warned, was paramount. The procedure was straightforward: flying only during full-moon periods to aid navigation, they were to cross the Channel and over the enemy coast as low as possible. On reaching the target, 400 feet was considered the ideal height for dropping agents and goods. This was high enough for the parachute to open but ensured minimal time floating about in the air when they might be all-too easily spotted by the enemy. All agents were to be known as 'Joes', no matter whether they were male or female; the aircrew were never to know their real names. If, for any reason they needed to land anywhere back in the UK other than Tempsford and they had agents on board it was up to them to make absolutely sure that no-one questioned them, regardless of rank. 'Dispatchers' would help the agent or goods out of the aircraft - these would either be the Flight Engineer - like Les Silver - or the mid upper gunner. There were other precautions: the targets for the drops would only be known to the pilot and navigator, although the dispatcher would be told the number and sex of agents they would be taking and the contents of any containers.

Rowland Peake's first mission was to drop containers on to a remote field in France. To begin with, he wasn't happy with his navigation - he knew they were definitely off course, but couldn't work out what was going wrong. Then, in the nick of time, he realised he'd failed to set the repeater compass with the amount of correction to allow for variation and deviation. Quickly rectifying this, he soon got them back on track; in the moonlight he was able to spot pale milky-blue landmarks as featured on his map, and sure enough, right over target they could see the faint glow of four lights - so dim they assumed they must be bicycle lamps - in the field below. Releasing their cargo through the bomb bay, they banked and set course for home.

Both Les Silver and Tom Smith had a fair degree of interaction with the 'Joes'. 'You used to flirt with the girls,' recalls Les. 'There was eye contact.' Sitting in the main body of the Halifax, they would chat - although the noise and amount of clothing they wore ensured conversation was of a 'basic' nature.

'There was laughing and joking,' he says, even if it was nervous laughter.² Tom Smith certainly admired the courage of these people. His first two missions with 161 Squadron were over Norway, where the Allies were actively encouraging major armed resistance in the months following D-Day in France. His pilot and their Wireless Operator were both Norwegian, which would have given them a better chance of survival had they ended up getting stuck there. On one of these trips, Tom remembers dropping two 'Joes' over an area that appeared devoid of habitation. 'There was no reception party as there normally was,' he noted later, 'and they simply jumped into a wilderness of snow...they were very brave people.'³ The casualty rate amongst agents was high. Many of the men and women they dropped would not be coming home. As the dispatcher, Tom Smith would help the agents into position over the trap-door, a circular hole cut out of the bottom of the fuselage. 'The memory of what happened then on this part of the operation has never left,' he recalls.

When the Green light for Go came on, one of us would tap the agent on the shoulder. Almost without exception the male agents would look beseechingly into the eyes of those around him as if to say goodbye to a sane world, and then jump out. The female agents would position themselves on the edge of the drop out door and go straight out. No eye contact, nothing. My heart and a prayer went out with each of them.⁴

By flying so low, it was hoped they would avoid both radar and interception by enemy aircraft, but this wasn't always the case. Les Silver remembers being attacked by night fighters, although they always managed to get themselves out of trouble. We only had superficial damage,' he says. Potentially far more dangerous was anti-aircraft fire - flak. On one of Rowland Peake's first trips, they had dropped some 'parcels' along with another Halifax. On their return, they saw the other plane caught by a blue searchlight cone and then shortiy after it was hit, it caught fire and dived, exploding as it plummeted into the ground. Blue searchlights were controlled by radar - once caught in a 'blue,' ordinary - or 'white' - searchlights would then be directed towards the unfortunate aircraft, followed by a hail of flak. A few missions later, Rowland and his crew were caught by a 'blue' themselves. 'The skipper stalled the engine,' he recalled, 'then put it in a screaming dive right at the searchlight. The Halifax didn't like it a lot and nor did we,' but as they roared over it, their rear-gunner fired a burst from his machine-guns and out went the light. 'The 'whites' still searched for us but we were safe.'⁵

During the first years of the war clandestine warfare was still in its infancy. Even parachuting was still in its experimental stage. The Russians had been early proponents, but almost every area of Britain' s armed forces had been woefully under-developed during the inter-war years, and parachuting was no exception. As late as Spring 1941, the head of de Gaulle's Free French Secret Services was taken by the British to watch some parachuting exercises. On this occasion, only sandbags were being used, but over half the parachutes never opened and the sandbags thudded heavily to the ground. We looked at each other, rather pale,' noted the Frenchman. 'Still, after all some parachutes had managed to open; so we might be lucky.'⁶

Nor was the Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, that eager to help, which was one of the reasons why the Special Duties Squadrons at Tempsford were never given any of his precious Lancasters, but rather, older bombers like the Halifax, Wellington and Whitley. Indeed, up until August 1941, the number of UK-based aircraft available for full-time work on clandestine operations was just five. This figure was still under 30 by the end of 1942.

138 Squadron was the first Special Duties squadron to be formed and was originally set up on Newmarket racecourse in August 1941; 161 Squadron followed six months later, although they only moved to the newly-built Tempsford in March 1942. This was a fairly basic air base - what another 161 Squadron pilot, Hugh Verity, called a 'rush job quickly built' - consisting of three hangars and a number of Nissen huts for the Officers' Mess, station headquarters, and squadron offices.⁷ The barns of what used to be Gibraltar Farm, tucked away at one end of the air base, were used by the SOE for their stores and as an agent reception and pre-flight preparation centre. Fortunately for the officers (although not for NCO aircrew like Les Silver or Tom Smith) nearby Hazells Hall, the local manor house, served as comparatively luxurious sleeping quarters.

Endnotes

1. Les Silver Second World War Experience Centre, 2001.956
2. Ibid.
3. Tom Smith, Special Duties Squadron, Second World War Experience Centre, 2000.392
4. Ibid.
5. Peake, W Rowland, 'They Were All Called Joe', F!ypast, March 2002
6. 'Passy' cited by MRD Foot in Resistance, p 120
7. Verity, Hugh, We Landed By Moonlight; Secret RAF Landings in France 1940-44, Crecy Publishing Ltd 1998, p14

Article by James Holland.

This article first appeared in the Autumn/Winter 2004 issue of the Journal

James Holland's Second World War Forum includes interviews with veterans.

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