chris willis wrote:It was a top secret Ace fighter squadron flown out from a top secret field in a place called Theydon Bois, a bit like the s.a.s top chappy's apparantly. so take that Chocks away Mike Booth
Ah yes how right you are I went away and did some further research.
The official papers and records were only made public last year, such was the secrecy that this small outfit operated under.
There were only six pilots allocated to the highly risky missions.
The nature of the tasks demanded top flying skills and the leading Officers in the outfit were a Wing Commander Kenneth
Baldock-Marrow and Squadron leader Christopher 'Willie' Wiles.
Several daring raids over Germany, with pinpoint accuracy with 60lb rockets, lead to several of the Squadron receiving DFCs . Including J. Harne and M.R. Barrington-Strummer
One particular event involved the rocketing of Locomotives pulling a huge consignment of balsawood for use in the construction of the Focke Wulf Moskito.
The trains had to be stopped at all costs without damaging the load.
This they acheived and production of the German twin ceased completely.
This raid was in the last months of the war and it was rumoured that the officers had squadron ground crew 'remove' two of the carriages rammed high with balsa logs and have it flown back to a secret location in Hertfordshire North of Stevenage.
No one knows why the material was so precious, but one of the surviving pilots Barry 'whizzer' Watson now in his late 80s, has said that the grandsons of Baldock-Marrow and Wiles are still working their way through the forest of timber hidden in a barn up there in Herts.
