In 1956 Bowring was seconded to the USAF’s Research and Development Establishment at Wright Patterson Air Force Base at Dayton, Ohio. After working on the design of cockpits for new aircraft in the flight dynamics laboratory, he was transferred to the Mercury (Man in Space) project. The launch soon afterwards of the Soviets’ Sputnik I gave Mercury a new urgency, and Bowring’s initial paper study developed into a major aspect of the project.
Mercury Astronaut Virgil Grissom...20 Oct 1960 With a USAF colleague (Bill Elkins), Bowring carried out the design and testing of the crew station for a single space capsule which had to provide the optimum position for a man during the high acceleration forces experienced during launch.
They also designed the instrumentation, restraint system and control positions and had to cater for the astronaut’s nutrition and hygiene needs. Much of the testing had to be conducted in a weightless environment. The USAF patented the seat design in the name of Elkins and Bowring, with Bowring’s rights assigned to the British government.
Samuel Cohen
Physicist who developed the neutron bomb as a 'sane and moral’ alternative to the 'A’ and 'H’ bombs
Although he is not a household name among those scientists who created nuclear technology and the devastating weaponry associated with it, the American physicist Samuel Cohen has his place in the nuclear story as the man who invented the Enhanced Neutron Weapon, colloquially known as the “neutron bomb”. The aim of the bomb was to be able to kill large numbers of troops by a concentrated discharge of subatomic particles delivered at relatively low altitude within a given radius, without the destructive effects of blast and collateral damage that were associated with “conventional” nuclear weapons.
With yields ranging from 1 kiloton to 10kt, the neutron bomb was conceived of by Cohen as a tactical weapon, with a use applicable to the European battlefield where its advantages in the Third World War scenario that was constantly under discussion in military circles was manifest. With the armoured forces of the Warsaw Pact likely to far outnumber those of Nato in any potential confrontation on the Central Front, a weapon that could be fired and aimed accurately by long-range artillery, to “kill” tanks and their crews without taking out nearby towns and their populations had, apparently, clear advantages.
The danger was, of course, that in a moment of crisis on the battlefield it seemed that, more than any other nuclear weapon since those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki — strategic or tactical — it might be possible actually to think of using it. It was thus a weapon that seemed capable of undermining the consensually understood military philosophy of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) that had kept the superpowers’ leaders from pressing the nuclear trigger since the acquisition of atomic weapons by both sides.
Successive US Administrations and their military advisers were therefore stalwartly against the neutron bomb. But in 1981 President Reagan ordered 700 neutron warheads to be built with the specific aim of confronting the Soviet tank threat in the central Europe theatre.
However, Reagan’s chilling words at that time, proclaiming it “the first weapon that’s come along in a long time that could easily and economically alter the balance of power”, provoked considerable protest on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Political figures and every Communist Party-controlled media outlet in the Soviet bloc attacked it. And they were joined not just by peace activists in the West but by many in the nuclear weapons industry (some of whom of course had their own economic motives for doing so), and by a number of Western military figures. In an almost unprecedented step back, the deployment of the neutron bomb by the United States to its Nato forces in Europe was cancelled.
Cohen was forced to abandon his crusade for what he genuinely regarded as a “sane and moral weapon”. It was only later that a chance remark in the Czech Communist Party newspaper Rude Pravo revealed that the campaign against the deployment of the neutron bomb was regarded as one of the most successful and significant Soviet-sponsored propaganda victories of the Cold War period to that date.
Samuel Theodore Cohen was born in New York in 1921, the son of Austrian-born Jews who had come to the US after a period spent in London. At the age of 4 he and the family moved to California where Samuel was educated at public (state) schools. A brilliant student, he gained entry to the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), where he graduated in physics and received his PhD in 1944.
That year he was inducted on to the Manhattan Project, which was building the world’s first atomic bomb. Working in the project’s Efficiency Unit, he studied the behaviour of neutrons in the plutonium bomb “Fat Man” which was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.
In 1950 he joined the RAND Corporation where his work on the intensity of fallout radiation was noticed by his elders and first became public when it was included as a special appendix in Samuel Glasstone’s book The Effects of Atomic Weapons. First published in 1950 and going through three editions between then and 1977, Glasstone’s book is still considered one of the most authoritative texts on the effects of nuclear explosions.
Cohen continued his work on neutrons and during the Vietnam War argued that the use of small neutron bombs could quickly win the conflict for the US and save many lives. US Administrations continued to turn a deaf ear to his theories, while from the left of the political spectrum peace activists denounced the neutron bomb as a “capitalist weapon”, since it destroyed people but spared housing stock. Even supporters of the notion of the bomb agreed that there was something a little grotesque about the idea of a world whose works of architecture and art might be left intact after a world war, but with no one to appreciate them.
The atmosphere changed with the accession of Ronald Reagan to the White House in 1981. A more aggressive policy towards a Soviet Union beginning to become enmired in its own adventure in Afghanistan was now the order of the day, and it is thought to have been Cohen himself who persuaded the new President to think about his neutron ideas as practical weapons. As a result 350 neutron bombs were produced as shells for the US Army’s relatively short-range 8-inch (200mm) howitzer, and a similar number as the W70 warhead for the Lance battlefield missile, which had a maximum range of 75 miles.
The storm of protest very soon put paid to these deployments, and when he saw the way the wind was blowing Cohen did not try to revive them. But he continued to believe in his brainchild and only recently declared of the neutron bomb that is was “the only nuclear weapon in history that makes sense in waging war. When the war is over, the world is still intact”.
Cohen left RAND in 1969 but continued to publish books on nuclear weapons. Among his titles were Tactical Nuclear Weapons: An Examination of the Issues (1978); The Neutron Bomb, Technological and Military Issues (1978), Checkmate on War (1980) and We Can Prevent World War III (1985). Latterly he had been concerned about the spread of types of fusion materials capable of detonating a small nuclear device and consequently ideal for terrorists.
Cohen’s first marriage, in 1948, to Barbara Bissell, was dissolved in 1952. He is survived by his second wife, Margaret, whom he married in 1960, and by their daughter and two sons.
Samuel T. Cohen, physicist, was born on January 25, 1921. He died on November 28, 2010, aged 89
Captain 'DJ’ Scott-Masson
Master of a P&O cruise ship who found himself diverted from the Mediterranean into the Falklands War
A remarkable facet of the campaign to recover the Falkland Islands from Argentina in 1982 was the use made of Ships Taken Up From Trade — or STUFT as they were known — without which the operation could not have been mounted. The tankers and supply ships of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary were augmented by no less than 45 passenger liners, tankers, ferries, container and cargo ships, offshore support vessels and tugs. Ships could be requisitioned if the owners proved unwilling, but P&O, Stena, Townsend Thoresen and United Towing were among the highly co-operative owners who disrupted their programmes for an indefinite period and in many cases put their ships in harm’s way.
All foreign sailors were replaced by British. When the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Henry Leach, was told that the 45,000-ton P&O Canberra was to carry some 2,000 men of 3 Commando Brigade and would be part of the assault plan, he said: “Better make sure the captain is in the Royal Naval Reserve.” He need not have worried. Canberra’s captain, Dennis ScottMasson, was a captain in the RNR with substantial seagoing experience in frigates, a gunnery course and attendance at the Senior Officers’ War Course, being twice a recipient of the Reserve Decoration. Expressive of the gallant support for the Royal Navy in wartime that has always been a characteristic of our merchant service was the fact that the staff captain, chief officer and second radio officer were also RNR and spoke the language. Canberra had just returned from a long cruise and during a phenomenal two days alongside in Southampton was fitted with a helicopter flight deck, had decks strengthened and embarked her troops and cargo.
Rear-Admiral “Sandy” Woodward, the Falklands Task Force commander, recorded how everyone, during the day of the amphibious landings in San Carlos Bay on May 21, when several Navy warships were sunk or damaged, was dumbfounded that “the Great White Whale” as she became known, had escaped unharmed. “With her totally inadequate damage control and fire-fighting arrangements, she was a floating bonfire awaiting a light.” Having disembarked her troops, Canberra left that night for safer waters, returning on June 4 with units of the reinforcing 5 Brigade which had been transferred from the Queen Elizabeth II, the largest and most vulnerable STUFT, in South Georgia. After the surrender, Canberra repatriated to Puerto Madryn a large number of Argentine junior officers, NCOs and conscripts, reportedly feeding them well and issuing two cigarettes per person per meal. Packed with troops, Canberra then returned home to rapturous acclaim.
Unfazed by the bombs and cannon shells from screeching Argentine fighter-bombers, Scott-Masson set a courageous example of steady command to his own people and to the 160-strong naval party also embarked throughout this protracted and complex operation. He was appointed CBE.
Dennis Scott-Masson was a third-generation seafarer — his grandfather was lost off Cape Horn in a faultily loaded merchantman, while his father worked for the Royal Mail line. Trained and educated at Pangbourne nautical college, Scott-Masson first went to sea in 1946 as a cadet with the Shaw Savill line in the Empire Deben. But his career flourished in many of the famous passenger and cargo ships of the celebrated Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company — the “P&O” — the Ranchi, Chusan, Arcadia, Cathay, Himalaya and Strathnaver among others, mainly voyaging to the Far East and Australia. His promotion to Staff Captain came in 1966; he was known for his deep growly voice and an uncompromising attitudes to disciplinary matters.
His favourite ship was always the Canberra in which he was Staff Captain once and in command twice. A particular pleasure was his time in the Uganda, the children’s cruise ship in which as Staff Captain he was reported as “brilliant with the children”, a description of their fierce father which was received with affectionate disbelief by his own five children.
He met his future wife, Anne-Marie Grisar, aboard the Arcadia in 1958. Her father was a Belgian officer in the Regiment des Guides who escaped to England during the Second World War. She and their three sons and two daughters survive him.
Captain Dennis Scott-Masson, CBE, RD and Bar, master mariner and P&O captain, was born on December 7, 1929. He died on November 16, 2010, aged 80
Colonel Sir Freddy Pile
Officer awarded the MC who helped save feasting colleagues from a Panzer
In March 1945, Pile, then a major, was commanding a squadron of the 1st Royal Tank Regiment (1 RTR). Having crossed the Rhine at Wesel, they were proceeding along the road between Borken and Stadtlohn when, in dense woodland, they encountered a large enemy force. Anti-tank guns were firing straight down the road at them, while on each flank panzerfausts were firing their rockets from the cover of the trees. Three tanks were hit; of these, two were set ablaze. It became impossible to see anything because of the black smoke.
Pile was ordered to withdraw and then to make a night attack with the support of a company of the 2nd Battalion the Devonshire Regiment. At 1am the infantry set off into the dark with 14 tanks. They managed to squeeze between the two burning tanks that had been knocked out earlier and then, using incendiary ammunition, poured machinegun fire into the trees on either side of the road.
Fires started all over the wood. By early morning, the squadron and the Devons had forced the bridge at Stadtlohn and had taken the town of Ahaus some miles further up the road. Pile was awarded an immediate MC.
Group Captain Geoff Womersley
Pathfinder pilot who was decorated for his role as a 'master bomber’ in raids on German cities
After taking over the squadron in February 1944, Womersley soon completed 26 operations against Germany's most heavily defended cities, including Berlin, Munich and Frankfurt. On many occasions he acted as "master bomber", with the role of directing other bombers on to the various coloured markers that indicated the aiming point for the target. This frequently involved Womersley remaining over the target, under fire, for long periods until the attack was complete.
On the night of May 12, he led nine of his Mosquitos in support of another squadron which was dropping mines in the Kiel Canal. It was 139 Squadron's task to drop flares to mark the route and to illuminate the target for the low-flying bombers. The raid was a great success and the canal was closed for many days. On another occasion, Womersley descended to low level over Mannheim, in the face of intense anti-aircraft fire, in order to give accurate instructions to the main force of bombers above. For this he was awarded a Bar to an earlier DSO.
Chief Petty Officer 'Darby' Allan
Mine disposal expert who took his skills to war zones and to the aftermath of civil conflicts around the world
Since September 2009 he had been involved in clearing mines in Sudan, where a decades-long civil war has left millions of lethal devices littered throughout the country's south. These explosives, strewn across land needed for farming, pose a serious risk to thousands of people returning to their villages from refugee camps.
In the strategic town of Kapoeta, for example, a survey showed that hundreds of innocent civilians – including many women and children – had been killed or injured following the end of the conflict.
Since August this year Allan and his teams of local assistants had destroyed more than 1,500 explosive devices as part of a project jointly funded by the Dutch, British and Spanish governments.
At about midday on October 15, however, while clearing mines and unexploded ordnance on Kapoeta's airfield, Allan accidentally detonated an anti-personnel mine; he died from his injuries a few hours later.
Peter Chopping
Doctor and Changi captive who kept tabs on the war with a secret wireless
Captured at the fall of Singapore in 1942, he treated his fellow PoWs for their many medical problems and secretly constructed a short-wave radio to track the progress of the war. The camp was liberated in 1945, when Chopping's radio was sent to the Imperial War Museum. He was mentioned in despatches.
Hans-Joachim Herrmann
Fanatical Luftwaffe ace and top Nazi tactician who never repented and went on to defend Holocaust deniers
As commander of the 7th Staffel of KG-4, he led many bombing attacks on England during the Battle of Britain; his first was against oil refineries at Thames Haven. He first attacked London on the night of September 7/8 1940 (his 69th operation against England), when he bombed the India Dock. By October 18 he had flown 21 missions over London. Despite the Luftwaffe opening the campaign against cities, Herrmann referred to his bombing of London as "revenge attacks". He later wrote of this period: "Our anger at the British war of terror overcame our reservations towards repaying like with like in the hope of compelling a return to warfare according to the rules."
In July 1941 Herrmann was appointed commander of a bomber group, initially based in France to attack targets in England, before it moved to Norway. Based in the far north, he attacked Allied convoys heading for Murmansk with supplies for the Russians; they included PQ-17, which was mercilessly harried by German aircraft with the loss of all but 11 of its 35 ships. After a year in command, Herrmann was assigned to the general staff in Germany, where he became a close confidant of Göring. During his career as a bomber pilot, Herrmann had flown 320 missions.
Wartime RAF pilot who in peacetime flew for BEA and accompanied the Duke of Edinburgh on a tour of South America
Peter Middleton’s first close encounter with the Royal Family was when he acted as First Officer to the Duke of Edinburgh on a two-month flying tour of South America that Prince Philip made in 1962. The second was at his 90th birthday in September when he met Prince William, who was about to become engaged to his granddaughter Kate.
In 1962 Prince Philip piloted 49 of the tour’s 62 flights, often with Middleton — who had been specially chosen for the tour by BEA — by his side. Middleton was later sent a letter of thanks and a pair of gold cufflinks from Buckingham Palace.
Peter Francis Middleton was born in Leeds in 1920, the third son of Richard Middleton and Olive Lupton, a family of mill owners and solicitors. After early tutoring at home where he developed a love of music and nature, Middleton attended Clifton College, Bristol before gaining a place at Oxford to study English. But within months of his arrival there he joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve.
He was posted to Canada as a flying instructor and it was two and a half years before he finally saw action, joining 605 Squadron at Manston, Kent, in August 1944. Flying Mosquito fighter-bombers, he was detailed to try to tip the wings of German doodlebugs to divert them away from devastating London. As Germany collapsed he was based in Belgium, Holland and Germany itself before being demobbed in 1946.
His first postwar job was with the Lancashire Aircraft Corporation. In Leeds he courted and later married Valerie Glassborow, a bank manager’s daughter. He was 6ft 2in tall; she was nearly a foot shorter, vivacious and enjoyed all his jokes. They had four sons.
In 1952 Middleton joined BEA and the family moved to Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, where they lived until his retirement in May 1974, when they moved to Vernham Dean, Hampshire. On the last page of his flight logbook, Middleton calculated that he had flown 16,000 hours or five and a half million miles during his flying career, “or 220 times around the world”.
But well before his retirement he had discovered another love: sailing. It had started with the building of small dinghies — the first in the family dining room — that he sailed with his sons on the Thames.
In August 1976 he and his wife set sail from the Hamble in their 35ft ketch Nainjaune to cross the Atlantic. They spent Christmas in the Caribbean and then headed for the Bahamas where the following February, ten miles of the coast of the tiny island of Mayaguana, with a terrible crash they hit a reef.
The boat could not be saved and gathering a few essentials they set out for shore in their life raft. Landing on a deserted beach they made themselves comfortable for the night, dining off Scotch and ginger biscuits. The following day they found the main town. The Mayaguana people were soon chugging out to examine the broken hull of the Nainjaune and her equipment. The Middletons were invited to visit a local family and found themselves being unabashedly served tea on crockery “borrowed” from their boat.
Returning to England, Middleton continued to sail for the next 20 years. His grandchildren recall the best of times being on the boat when they would respond to his every command by crying out irreverently “Aye, aye, Kipper”. They never tired of spreading the underside of his toast with peanut butter, which he hated but responded to with theatrical good humour.
Middleton had a boundless enthusiasm for life. As well as a keen sailor he was a photographer, writer and carpenter, making tiny tables and chairs for his grandchildren, a pirate ship for them to play on in the garden and repairing pews in his local church.
His 90th birthday party was attended by the whole family and three additional guests, including Prince William.His granddaughter Catherine visited him again on her return from Kenya where Prince William proposed to her last month.
Middleton’s wife Valerie died in 2006 and he leaves four sons and five grandchildren.
Peter Middleton, pilot, was born on September 3, 1920. He died on November 2, 2010, aged 90
Major-General David Egerton: artilleryman who won the MC
Although the son of an admiral, David Egerton had boyhood hopes of becoming a civil engineer, but was persuaded to join the Army. While he was marking out a promising future on active service during the Second World War, a shell deprived him of his left leg above the knee and severely injured his left arm. These disabilities led him to qualify for the technical staff, for which he showed great aptitude, contributing significantly to the development of weapons and munitions during the battlefield capability rivalry of the Cold War.
The only son of Rear-Admiral Wion de Malpas Egerton, David Boswell Egerton was educated at Stowe, winning a prize cadetship to the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. Commissioned into the Royal Artillery in 1937, he served in India with the 11th Dehra Dun Mountain Battery and was attached to 81st Field Battery for operations in Waziristan. In autumn 1939 he went to France in command of 67 (Middleton’s Company) Battery of the 20th Anti-Tank Regiment RA and took part in the battles of May 1940 through Belgium to Dunkirk.
In the later stages of the withdrawal of the 3rd Infantry Division he commanded an element of the rearguard, blowing a bridge in the face of the German advance and, while under intense mortar and machinegun fire, seeing his battery’s guns well-placed on the embarkation perimeter near Furnes. He brought his battery back to England, less one officer and one sergeant killed during the withdrawal, and was awarded the MC for his courage and leadership.
In 1942, he went to Egypt to join 7th Field Regiment but was switched to command B Battery 1st RHA for the key battles of Alam Halfa, in which Rommel’s armour was destroyed on the 8th Army’s minefields, and El Alamein. While moving his battery through the minefield gap at Alamein the armoured regiments ahead were surprised by well-placed German 88mm guns. The consequent delay left his own guns dangerously exposed at dawn, so he ordered them back behind the minefield — but not without casualties.
In April 1943 he attended the wartime staff course at Haifa before being posted to Lebanon to join Headquarters 9th Army — a deliberately deceptive title for a predominantly training formation. In February 1944 he took command of 8th (Strange’s) Battery in the 13th Anti-Tank Regiment in Italy.
It was during the 8th Army’s advance up the Tiber plain in the summer of 1944 that the blast from a German 105mm shell shattered his left leg and arm. On recovery in 1945 he was seconded to the Dutch Expeditionary Force forming-up after the liberation of the Netherlands, but recognised that his military career had to take a different direction if he was to advance further.
He attended the first postwar technical staff course at the Royal Military College of Science at Shrivenham, and his career blossomed. After two years at the Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment at Fort Halstead, where he worked on weapon design, he went to Washington to liaise with US Army scientists and technical experts developing rocket and guided-weapon systems. Returning to England in 1953 he joined the staff of the Controller of Munitions, was promoted lieutenant-colonel two years later, appointed OBE and granted the temporary rank of colonel to head Fort Halstead’s ammunition branch.
While in this post, he was able to persuade the Ordnance Board that as gun barrel pressures could by then be measured accurately it was no longer necessary to use a pseudo-unit formula in barrel design calculations, with consequent enhanced reliability. He also worked on the high-explosive squash-head (HESH) shells for artillery and tank guns, proving their effectiveness against both armour and infantry; thus reducing radically the need for simple HE ammunition.
A year at the Imperial Defence College (now the Royal College of Defence Studies) brought promotion to brigadier as the Army representative on the MoD Defence Research Policy Staff. His next assignment, as commandant of the guided weapons trials establishment on Anglesey, was cut short by appointment, as a Major-General, to the inter-Service working party on the air threat to ground forces in limited war. This produced the Rapier and Blowpipe ground-to-air guided weapon systems that proved their value in the Falklands conflict of 1982.
In 1964 he took over the post of Director-General of Artillery, on his initiative subsequently renamed DG Weapons (Army). In 1968 he became Vice President of the Ordnance Board and was appointed CB. Before leaving the Army in 1971 he led an inquiry into new sites for weapon proving ranges.
Active in retirement, he became general secretary of the Association of Recognised English Language Schools, an organisation established for the benefit of foreign students, working closely with the British Council. On leaving this post in 1979 he received a letter from a school saying, “You have done a marvellous job, building a sound structure from absolutely nothing, giving it form, substance and even a soul — the soul of good fellowship and mutual trust in what could have been a morass of rivalries.”
He was vice-chairman of the Dorset Association for the Disabled and participated in the work of the Royal British Legion and many other national and local charities. In 2008, at the age of 94, he inherited the family baronetcy — created in 1617 — from his cousin Sir John Grey Egerton, 15th baronet. He declined to use the title and made inquires as to whether he could formally renounce it.
His wife Margaret, youngest daughter of Canon Charles Inge, whom he married in 1946, predeceased him. He is survived by a son, William, who inherits the baronetcy, and two daughters.
Major-General David Egerton, CB, OBE, MC, was born on July 24, 1914. He died on November 17, 2010, aged 96
Qualifying as a radar operator during the early years of the Second World War, Joan Dingwall was, after a number of postings at air defence stations around the country, specially trained for tracking incoming V1s and V2s on the latest equipment.
At Bawdsey in Suffolk she served as a radar operator from the beginning of Hitler’s Vergelltungswaffen (reprisal weapons) campaign in June 1944, until after March 1945, when the last V2s landed in Kent. As such she played her part with her colleagues in providing radar information that led to the interception of the V1 “buzz bomb”and the identification of the launch sites of the V2 rocket.
She was born Joan Lancaster, at Gateshead on the Tyne in 1923. After her parents moved to Kenton, Middlesex, she was educated at St Dominic’s School for Girls at Harrow-on-the-Hill. When they moved to Derby where her father was an engineer for the London Midland and Scottish Railway, she had her first job as a secretary in the LMS offices.
As soon as she was 18 she joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) in 1941 and after training as an RDF (Radio Direction Finding, as radar was then known) operator at Cranwell, was posted in 1942 to a radar station in North Wales. Little hostile air activity was evident there but this changed when she was posted to Pevensey on the South Coast, where German air raids were frequent and the station also tracked outward bound raids by the RAF, and their return.
Then, with the threat of the V1 and V2 raids impending, she was sent to Poling, West Sussex, to train on a new secret device designed to be capable of tracking the V1, a subsonic pilotless pulse-jet aircraft, whose speed was too high for it to be intercepted by the average air defence fighter. The latest and fastest of the RAF’s fighters, which included the jet-powered Gloster Meteor, were then directed to intercept the incoming threat. AA batteries equipped with the new proximity fuse were also established along the coasts.
Leading Aircraftwoman Lancaster was next posted to Bawdsey where, a week after D-Day, the tracking of incoming V1s began, when the first of these flying bombs were fired at the UK. She soon became adept at detecting the first blip announcing the approach of a V1, more than 50 miles away, when the shout from the operator, “Diver, Diver, Diver”, alerted the station to its approach. Compared to tracking aircraft, she recalled, “This was no problem — a strong steady echo racing along the trace, faster than an aircraft.” Being pilotless the V1 did not jink to make interception difficult.
Nothing could be done to intercept the V2 rockets, the first of which fell on the UK in September 1944. Reaching a maximum height of 50 miles and a terminal velocity of 2,500mph, these were essentially precursors of the modern ballistic missile. But LACW Lancaster and her fellow radar operators rendered great service in being able to detect the V2 as it was launched. A new secret device, “Oswald”, installed at Bawdsey in the summer of 1944, could pick up the missile as it rose from the ground 125 miles away, and this enabled launching sites to be pinpointed and later targeted by Allied bombers.
With the advance of the Allied armies, the V1 launch sites had to be moved further eastwards to areas which were out of range of London. Antwerp and Brussels became their new targets after October 1944. With its greater range the V2 was able to continue to function almost until the end of the war when its launch sites were overrun. The last fatal casualty was a housewife, killed in Orpington, Kent, on March 27, 1945.
Joan Lancaster was demobbed in December 1945, by which time she had bcome Joan Dingwall, after marrying Peter Dingwall, an RAF rear gunner. Living at first in Derby and then in Northwood, Middlesex, they had a son and a daughter.
After her husband’s death at the age of 59 in 1982 she settled near her daughter in the Forest of Dean, where she visited local schools, giving talks about her experiences as a wartime radar operator, using her own hand-drawn diagrams and maps to illustrate the meticulous notes she had kept from her Bawdsey days.
She is survived by a son and daughter.
Joan Dingwall, wartime radar operator, was born on March 16, 1923. She died on October 19, 2010, aged 87
The death of Gaston Vandermeerssche in Milwaukee briefly revived the fallacy that, as part of some campaign of deception during the Second World War, the Special Operations Executive (SOE) deliberately sent agents into German-occupied The Netherlands, aware that they would be captured on arrival.
It is true that German army intelligence (the Abwehr) had penetrated and later took over SOE’s network in The Netherlands. After arresting an SOE wireless operator, Hubertus Lauwers, and forcing him on threat of death to radio false intelligence to London using his own set and ciphers, the Abwehr duped London into sending more agents and supplies. Even when subsequently captured operators did not use their security checks — as instructed if captured — suspicions were dismissed. Thus it was London’s refusal to accept the possible scale of the disaster that led to the continued dispatch of agents and not a feature of some Machiavellian plot.
Born in Ghent in 1921, Vandermeerssche left the local university to answer Leopold III’s call to arms when the German Army swept into Belgium in May 1940. As the Belgian and British forces were overwhelmed by the onslaught, he crossed into France and headed south for Toulouse. Although the Franco-Belgian frontier was closely policed after the French armistice with Germany in June, it was a less formidable obstacle than the heavily defended Channel coastline. In consequence, Belgian escape lines adopted this route, as it gave eventual access to the Vichycontrolled southern half of France, the Mediterranean and Pyrenees.
Vandermeerssche became a courier along such a route, working from Brussels to Toulouse. Security being of paramount importance, each line kept exclusively to itself with agents knowing only the absolute minimum about contacts and safe houses along it. Vandermeerssche developed his own line, concentrating on delivering microfilmed intelligence from Belgium through Toulouse to the Belgian Consul in Barcelona and ultimately to the Belgian Government in exile in London.
It has to be acknowledged that relations between the Belgian representatives in London and SOE headquarters in Baker Street were fractious and untrusting. There were organisational and personal reasons for this and a similar situation persisted in SOE’s dealings with the exiled administration of the Netherlands. It was therefore hardly surprising that when Queen Wilhelmina decided to set up her own Resistance movement in The Netherlands she turned to Vandermeerssche who, by mid-1942, had established a reputation as a successful Resistance operator who was acknowledged even by the Gestapo He rose to the challenge, adopting the codename “Rinus”. Within months he established a courier line from The Netherlands through Belgium and France — wholly occupied by Germany after the Allied invasion of the North African coastline in November 1942 — over the Pyrenees to Barcelona. Dutch and Belgian agents were involved, but the line was independent of the SOE circuits operating along much of its length, as were other courier and escape lines, for reason of mutual security.
Vandermeerssche served The Netherlands and his own country’s interests well but was never able to come to terms with SOE’s continued reservations about the security of his network, or the value of the information his agents were providing. The extent of the German takeover of SOE’s network in The Netherlands was revealed only when two SOE agents captured there escaped and made their way to Switzerland in November 1943. By then Vandermeerssche had fallen into the hands of the Gestapo, having unluckily been caught up in routine police action against black marketeers in Perpignan.
Subjected to interrogation and physical abuse for many months in prisons in France and Germany, he resolutely continued to conceal his identity and those of his agents and the safe houses along his courier chain. He was sentenced to death for espionage in July 1944 but, no doubt with an eye to the outcome of the war, the governor of the German prison where he was being held kept him alive. He was finally released at the end of the war in Europe in May 1945.
He returned to Belgium and the University of Ghent, where he earned a PhD in physics and became the director of electron microscopy. Some years later he moved to the United States to work for the multinational finance company 3M. On leaving there, he returned to Belgium to become an expert on surface abrasion with the brewers of Schlitz beers. Schlitz later moved him to Milwaukee where, from 1980, he served as the honorary French Consul.
His wartime exploits on behalf of Belgium and The Netherlands were acknowledged by decorations bestowed by both countries, also by France and Luxembourg. In 1988 he published Gaston’s War, which described not only his part in the conflict but also set out his long-held suspicions of SOE’s motives for continuing to send agents into occupied The Netherlands long after doubts about the security of the network there had been aroused. A film of the same title was made in 1997.
After the war he married Violette Castiaux, the daughter of a Belgian Resistance worker. She survives him with a son and three daughters.
Gaston Vandermeerssche, worker for the Belgian and Dutch Resistance, was born on August 18, 1921. He died on November 1, 2010, aged 89
