Bomber and reconnaissance pilot who was decorated for a dangerous Cold War mission into Soviet air space
Joining the RAF in 1947 in an early postwar entry to Cranwell, Robert “Mac” Furze was to find himself involved in two very different, but equally extraordinary operations in which the RAF distinguished itself in the early 1950s. The first, in October 1953, may fairly be described as the “last great air race”, over a 12,000-mile course from London to Christchurch, New Zealand.
In a contest in which the remarkable English Electric Canberra jet bomber led the field home to secure the first three places, Furze, drafted in at the last moment when the pilot of the 3rd RAF Canberra entry fell ill, was third to cross the line at Christchurch, in the wake of the first-placed RAF Canberra, and a Royal Australian Air Force Canberra, having covered the route in 24 hours 34 minutes, at an average speed of more than 500mph.
Within a few months he was to find himself participating in one of the most remarkable, but least publicised, aerial intelligence gathering operations of the early years of the Cold War, in which British aircrews flew American reconnaissance bombers (with RAF markings) in deep penetration sorties, at high altitude, into Soviet air space over western Russia.
The operation was triggered by the American desire to obtain high-quality photographs of Soviet air bases, factories and missile sites which would become targets for the USAF’s Strategic Air Command, to be bombed from high altitude should a third world war break out. In such an eventuality the SAC’s bombardiers would be able to compare these photographs with the radar images they would obtain if forced, as was likely, to fly over them in bad weather or at night.
The snag for the USAF was that in 1951 President Truman had forbidden surveillance overflights of the Soviet Union, posing a problem for the SAC commander, the pugnacious General Curtis LeMay. The American high command therefore decided to ask the British to act for it, conscious of the UK’s willingness to prove itself useful in the “special relationship” between the two countries. The UK was to share the results obtained. British compliance was swift and enthusiastic.
The aircraft to be used was a reconnaissance version of the North American B45 Tornado, the USAF’s first operational jet bomber. The idea was that these RB45Cs would carry RAF charts and be wearing RAF roundel markings. If any of them fell into Soviet hands the US would disclaim all knowledge. For its part the RAF would deny that it had any RB45Cs in its inventory. None of these artless stratagems was thought likely to stand up for long against rigorous interrogation.
The first of these RB45C sorties was undertaken in April 1952 by a special duties flight commanded by Squadron Leader John Crampton (obituary, July 14, 2010). It safely evaded Soviet air defences, whose commanders were furious but impotent to prevent their being overflown at high altitude.
For a second series of sorties, ordered for April 1954, Crampton was again in command of the flight, which was now joined by Furze, who had already had experience on the RB45C on radar trials in October 1952. On this second occasion the Soviet air defences were better prepared. Yet scrambled MiG15 fighters still could not reach the 36,000ft at which the RAF crews flew. But as they neared Kiev the RB45Cs aircraft almost ran into a barrage of well-predicted anti-aircraft shell bursts, exploding ahead of them.
Diving under the flak, the RAF crews turned and headed for the safety of West German air space, a thousand miles away, at full throttle. They kept their eyes peeled for Soviet fighters which, as they subsequently learnt, had been ordered to ram them on sight, rather than risking their escaping as might happen in a cannon engagement. In the event all the RAF crews reached West German airfields safely. Furze was awarded the Air Force Cross.
Robert McAlastair Furze was born in 1928 and educated at Pangbourne Nautical College, with a naval career in mind. But he had become enthralled with the idea of flying and, instead of aiming for Dartmouth, he entered Cranwell in 1947. Shortly after passing out in 1949 he joined 617 Squadron of Dambusters fame, by then flying the Lincoln, a development of the celebrated wartime Lancaster. This won the 1950 Bomber Command bombing competition, for which Furze commanded an aircrew, and he went with his comrades to Buckingham Palace to collect the cup.
Military aircraft technology and performance was advancing rapidly and by 1951 he was posted to 101 Squadron then operating the Canberra jet bomber, flying at more than twice the speed of the Lincoln and at heights around 50,000ft, undreamt of by crews of the piston-engined bomber.
The race to Christchurch, which featured a remarkable performance from the world’s first turbo-prop airliner, the Vickers Viscount, was won by a Canberra piloted by Flight Lieutenant Roland Burton, navigated by Flight Lieutenant Don Gannon in a time of 23hr 51 min, including stops. Squadron Leader Peter Raw of No 1 Long Range Flight RAAF, was 41 minutes behind them in an Australian built Canberra, just pipping Furze who was two minutes astern of him.
Subsequent flying appointments included trials connected with the introduction of V-bombers into squadron service, and command of 14 Squadron, a Canberra low-level nuclear strike unit, based at RAF Wildenrath in Germany. He married in 1955 Marna Ray Stevens. She died in 1995 and he is survived by their daughter.
Wing Commander Robert Furze, AFC, bomber and reconnaissance pilot, was born on November 9, 1928. He died on December 4, 2011, aged 83
Anthony Cave-Browne-Cave
Солдат, награждённый в 19 лет за героизм в боях с японцами
Soldier decorated as a teenager for his heroism while fighting against the Japanese who became a respected architect after the war
An end to the war in Europe was in sight by February 1945 as the Allied armies prepared to cross the Rhine. In the Far East, however, the Americans were still clearing the Pacific islands en route to Japan, and Sir William Slim’s 14th Army had yet to break into Burma’s central plain. It was with Major-General (later Field Marshal Sir) Frank Festing’s 36th Division that Tony Cave-Browne-Cave won the DSO as a 19-year-old subaltern, an achievement as close to winning a Victoria Cross as one could get.
Pushing southwards towards Myitsun on the west bank of the Shweli river on February 16, Festing was obliged to pull back a brigade that had become exposed and ordered 72 Infantry Brigade, including 6th Battalion South Wales Borderers with whom Cave-Browne-Cave was a platoon commander, to cover the withdrawal.
The Welshmen were constrained by a road block sited in depth — a technique in which the Japanese had been proficient throughout the campaign. Cave-Browne-Cave led his platoon in the first attempt to break through, but was halted when light machinegun fire from a flank decimated his leading rifle section. Ordering bayonets to be fixed, he led the remainder of his platoon against the LMG position, bayoneting two enemy himself and capturing the gun.
Caught by sniper fire from the flank, he withdrew his platoon to attempt another route to the road block, only to encounter further — and stronger — automatic fire. Again he led a bayonet charge on the second machinegun position, driving the enemy off and killing two of them himself. The in-depth positions behind the road block still held firm, however, so Cave-Browne-Cave led a third bayonet charge to deal with them.
This accomplished, another platoon that had lost its officer was ordered forward to clear any remaining opposition. Exhausted but miraculously unwounded, Cave-Browne-Cave at once volunteered to lead this platoon on a fourth bayonet charge. As he went forward, his small pack was shot off his back and his steel helmet holed in two places. The road block was then finally cleared and the battalion advanced to complete its task.
On the previous evening Cave-Browne-Cave and his company commander had discussed the possibility of crossing the 500-yard-wide Shweli river during the night, so as to outflank the Japanese by moving down the eastern bank. They agreed that it would be a highly risky enterprise as the river was in flood and despite there being a mid-stream island downstream onto which anyone washed away might hope to scramble ashore.
During this conversation Cave-Browne-Cave revealed that he was unable to swim and had passed the compulsory swimming test during officer training by walking in full equipment along the floor of the swimming pool, popping up occasionally for gulps of air.
The war not over for 6th South Wales Borderers when the Japanese surrendered in Rangoon on August 28, 1945. They were sent to Sumatra to rescue British and Commonwealth prisoners of war and Dutch women and children held by the Japanese since their capture of the Dutch East Indies in 1942. This was not a straightforward affair, as Indonesian nationalists had taken over the islands, including Java containing the capital Batavia (now Jakarta), to prevent any return of Dutch administrators.
In 2004 a journalist from the Netherlands made contact with Cave-Browne-Cave through his former regimental headquarters, on behalf of a Dutch woman who as a six-year old child had been rescued from a primitive internment camp in which she and her mother were starving, as she wished to express her appreciation.
Anthony Cave-Browne-Cave was born in 1925 in Cheltenham where his father was entertainments manager at the Winter Gardens. Thinking that his surname would sit strangely with his employment, his father used his forenames of Courtney Edwards, and Anthony was unaware of his true surname until issued with his identity card after the outbreak of war in September 1939.
After attending Rhyl County School and beginning a course at Liverpool School of Art before enlistment, Cave-Browne-Cave read for a degree at Birmingham School of Architecture after demobilisation in 1947. He started his own practice in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1955, being joined in 1960 by Kenneth Collins, a former fellow student at Birmingham.
They took on small commissions for local authorities and industrial buildings until becoming sufficiently well-known to attract more demanding commissions. Ragley Hall, the property of the Marquis of Hertford, required restoration of its west façade and, being listed, the project was undertaken under supervision of the Ministry of Works.
This commitment led to other prestigious commissions in Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Warwickshire — such as the conversion of Alveston Manor in Stratford-on-Avon into a country house hotel — and a 15-year business association with Trust House Forte. In 1984 the practice merged with another and on Cave-Browne-Cave’s retirement became Hawkes, Edwards and Cave.
He married Dinah Ann Mitchell of Shropshire in 1957. She survives him with three sons. Another son predeceased him.
Anthony Cave-Browne-Cave, DSO, soldier and architect, was born on March 4, 1925. He died on October 31, 2011, aged 86
John Stone
Офицер сапёров, чья разведка берега привела к тому что Монтгомери изменил план высадки в Нормандии
Sapper officer whose beach reconnaissance convinced Montgomery to change his Normandy landing plan
As C-in-C of Army Group B defending the “Atlantic Wall” from the Zuider Zee to the mouth of the Loire, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was convinced that maximum force would be required to repel the Allied invasion and the first 24 hours would be decisive. He consequently decreed: “The high-water line must be the main fighting line” and deployed his forces accordingly.
In pursuit of Rommel’s policy, the Normandy beaches between the high and low-water marks were obstructed by underwater devices designed to blow or tear holes in the hulls of the Allied landing craft. Rommel’s adversary from the Western Desert, General (later Field Marshal) Sir Bernard Montgomery commanding the American 1st and British 2nd Armies for the landing and break-in phases of the invasion, was to land his assaulting infantry close to the high-water mark to avoid a heavily burdened, hazardous trudge over many yards of open beach under fire.
Air photographs of the proposed landing beaches revealed the depth and extent of the enemy obstacle belt, including rows of poles tipped with objects believed to be mines. The height of the poles, assessed by the length of the shadows they cast, suggested they would be below sea level at high water, making a beach reconnaissance essential to establish the nature of the mines, in particular whether or not they were designed to be exploded magnetically.
Four small parties of volunteers from 274 Company Royal Engineers under command of HQ Combined Operations, each led by a Sapper officer able to identify the mines by type, were delivered inshore by Royal Navy motor launches, then landed in rubber dinghies.
Lieutenant John Stone commanded one such party comprising only himself with a Sapper sergeant and corporal. They beached at low tide as far as possible from the enemy defensive outposts and within a relatively short distance of the nearest poles. The sergeant led the way, sweeping the route ahead with a detector to warn of any buried mines, while the corporal paid out a line behind them so they could find their way back to dingy. At one point they were held in the beam of a searchlight for 15 seconds, but stood stock still; at another, an enemy patrol passed inland opposite where they crouched.
The mine detector gave warning that the mine on the first pole was metal but Stone’s cautious examination revealed it to be a Mark 42 Teller anti-tank mine, plate-shaped — hence the name — containing 5½kg of explosive. The detonator was not a magnetic device but was designed to explode the mine under pressure of a tank or armoured vehicle. If struck, such a mine would blow a hole in a landing craft hull large enough to sink it.
Stone paced the distance between the poles and between the rows, so that a plan could be made to steer between them. The party then returned to the dinghy and rowed out to the motor launch with information that led to a radical change in Montgomery’s landing plan.
Rather than attempting to beach the landing craft at the high-water mark, it was decided to send them in at half-tide, between three and four hours before high water when the mine poles would be visible and the landing craft could steer between the poles and discharge their cargoes beyond the obstacle belt, either on to the beach or in shallow water.
To reduce the danger to the infantry of advancing over the remaining exposed beaches, the landings were to be led by duplex-drive “swimming” tanks, which were able to avoid the poles and bring their armament to bear to suppress the enemy’s defensive fire, allow Sappers to begin dealing with the mines and obstacles and the main force of infantry to follow.
Stone was awarded the Military Cross for his resolute and skilful leadership of his patrol, receiving the decoration from Montgomery himself. The key importance of his successful mission was emphasised by two of the other three patrols being taken prisoner after bumping the enemy in the darkness, and the third patrol being unable to get ashore as the surf on their beach was too rough.
John Thomas Stone returned to civilian life after the war and made a successful career as a consultant civil engineer, eventually retiring to Weymouth. He died of prostate cancer on the day before the local Armistice Day parade this year, his place being taken by one of his daughters.
He is survived by his wife, Nora, and three daughters.
John T. Stone, MC, Sapper officer and consultant civil engineer, was born on September 14, 1922. He died on November 10, 2011, aged 89
Lieutenant-Colonel George Woolnough
Пехотный офицер, награждённый в Италии Военным Крестом за захват вражеской позиции и отражение контратаки врага
Infantry soldier who won the MC for capturing an enemy position in Italy and fighting off a counterattack
George Woolnough won a Military Cross in testing circumstances in Italy in October 1943. The following March, his battalion accompanied the 5th Infantry Division to the Anzio beachhead. Intended by Churchill to be a “wildcat hurled ashore” behind the enemy’s Gustav line, it had become “a stranded whale”.
While a company commander with 2nd Battalion The Wiltshire Regiment, Woolnough was ordered to capture high ground overlooking Cantalupo, a village in a huddle of hills northeast of the River Volturno. Intersected by deep ravines, the approach was ruinous to cohesion, so Woolnough reached the objective with his headquarters and only one of his three platoons.
Despite this disadvantage, he drove the enemy off their hill and held it in the face of heavy mortar fire and the rapidly launched German counterattack until dark and throughout that night. A second enemy counter-attack during the night brought the loss of one of the remaining platoon’s three sections, but Woolnough hung on until the rest of his battalion was able to secure its objectives.
He received his MC for this action and later found himself in equally demanding circumstances in the Anzio beachhead. The initial landing in January 1944 by one American and one British division — supported by special forces and aircraft based at Naples — had taken the enemy by surprise. But failure to secure the Alban Hills around the port’s flat hinterland had resulted in bitter fighting as Field Marshal Kesselring rushed reinforcements to contain the landing.
The British 5th Division arrived to relieve the exhausted British units on the western shoulder of the perimeter on March 12. The 2nd Wiltshires deployed to Carrocetto astride the Albano road leading north to Rome but the break-out to the east, led by three American divisions, did not begin until the end of May. When the British 5th Division began to drive a salient up the Albano road on June 3, the Wiltshires were held up by a German machinegun position. Sergeant Maurice Rogers led the attack that destroyed it but was killed. Woolnough’s witness to his selfless bravery contributed to the award of a posthumous VC.
George Frederick Woolnough was born in Aldershot in 1914. Such was the bloody nature of the opening phase of the First World War, his mother was the only woman in the military hospital’s maternity ward who still had a husband. His father, Frederick, was an army schoolmaster and when he was posted to India in 1919, George and his younger brother were boarded out in Salisbury, where he attended Bishop Wordsworth’s School until going to Sandhurst.
Commissioned into The Wiltshire Regiment in 1935, he saw action in Palestine at the time of the 2nd Arab Revolt and in Belgium and France during the withdrawal to Dunkirk and subsequent evacuation. After the war he was an instructor at the Staff College in Iraq, then a Hashemite kingdom, and later became the last commanding officer of 1st Battalion The Wiltshire Regiment and the first of the Duke Edinburgh’s Royal Regiment, after the Wiltshires had amalgamated with the Royal Berkshires in 1959.
His battalion was involved in suppressing the Eoka campaign in Cyprus and tracking down and killing the notorious terrorist Kyriakos Matsis.
Woolnough left the Army in 1964 to become the founding secretary of the Friends of Salisbury Cathedral. He was also the area commander for the South Wiltshire St John’s Ambulance and churchwarden in his local church in Middle Woodford.
He was unmarried.
Lieutenant-Colonel G. F. Woolnough, MC, infantry soldier, was born on December 7, 1914. He died on January 5, 2012, aged 97
Captain Charles Ridley
Кавалер Военного креста (за боби в Италии), в мирное время ставший журналистом
Soldier who won the Military Cross in Italy in 1944 and then had a successful career as a journalist with UPI
As a teenager, Charles Ridley decided to assuage his craving for adventure by going to New Zealand to try his hand at sheep farming on the Canterbury Plains. He favoured New Zealand because it was relatively close to the fabled South Sea islands. If sheep farming proved too strenuous, or otherwise failed to come up to expectations, he would sail on to Polynesia and become a beachcomber.
But he never did get to New Zealand. He was booked to sail aboard the P&O liner Mooltan on September 12, 1939. But nine days before that, the Second World War broke out. He cancelled his sailing and made his way to Whitehall to join the Army.
Commissioned into the Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment, Ridley was mentioned in despatches while serving with the 56th Reconnaissance Regiment during the Allied invasion of French North Africa, and awarded an immediate Military Cross in the Italian campaign. In many respects, his wartime conduct was a forecast of his later adventurous attitude as foreign correspondent.
On June 30, 1944, during the advance of the 78th Division from Castiglione de Lago on the western shore of Lake Trasimene, his reconnaissance troop ran into stiff enemy resistance while he was sounding out the ground for the 8th Army’s advance to Cortona and the next strategic objective of Arezzo. After overcoming a German strong point on the lakeside, his leading armoured car was ambushed and its commander wounded.
Getting down from his own vehicle, he walked forward to locate the enemy positions before directing the fire of his troop’s turret guns to allow the damaged car to be withdrawn and the wounded NCO evacuated. But the enemy was already working round his flanks.
Moving through the close wooded country still on foot, he directed the fire of the armoured cars’ main armament to where he could see the enemy, holding them down until a troop of tanks could be brought forward to give him support and allow the advance to continue. The citation for his Military Cross included the comment that his conduct was an inspiration to all those around him.
It was during a year with the occupation forces in Vienna while awaiting demobilisation that Ridley decided to become a journalist. The life of the newspaper correspondents he met there appeared to offer the best prospect for continuing the sort of adventures he enjoyed in the Austrian capital.
With the help of his father, a prominent figure in local politics, he landed a job as a junior sports editor in the London office of the American news agency United Press, which later became United Press International.
Ridley stayed with the company through 48 years of drama and adventure in most of the capitals of Europe, with stints in Africa and the Middle East (including several years in Beirut with his wife and their three young children in the 1970s).
His first foreign posting was to Warsaw in 1950-51. Horrified by the events he witnessed there, he wrote: “During my time in Warsaw, the Stalinist subjugation of the Polish nation was in its most gruesome early stages. The appalling reign of terror in that Russian-imposed police state sparked a personal crusade against Communism that pervaded my professional life.”
That antipathy was reinforced by the Soviet crushing of the tragic 1956 attempt by Hungary to overthrow the Communist dictatorship, which he covered from Vienna and Budapest. He then covered the crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968.
During the war he had developed a passion for Italy, and a posting in Rome during the 1950s reinforced his love for the country. In 1980 he began a 14-year assignment in Rome, at the start of what he described as “the Polish Pope John Paul the Second’s triumphant 10-year crusade to guide the overwhelmingly Catholic Poles in their successful bid to oust the hated Communist regime. The total collapse of communism in the rest of Eastern Europe followed quickly.”
Charles Walter Hays Ridley had been born in 1921 in Aberdeen where he lived until the age of 9. His father then moved the family to Tottenham, North London, and became Mayor of Southgate in Coronation year.
After retiring from his international career with UPI at the age of 73 in 1994, he returned to live in London.
He is survived by his wife, Julia, whom he married in 1969, and by two daughters and a son.
Captain Charles Ridley, MC, soldier and journalist, was born on May 31, 1921. He died on December 3, 2011 aged 90.
'Бій відлунав. Жовто-сині знамена затріпотіли на станції знов'
