Flying the Flag
Martin Mace investigates the Story of an audacious low-level sortie to Paris in the summer of 1942 – a mission intended to send a clear message to the people of the French capital.
In the spring of 1942, the Commander-in-Chief of Coastal Command, Air Chief Marshal Sir Philip de la Ferté Joubert, was informed through the SOE that the occupying German forces paraded daily in Paris. In an unvarying routine, the troops apparently marched down the Champs-Elysees, every day, between 12.l5 and 12.45 hours. Joubert decided that this was an ideal opportunity to send a message of support to the French population.
It fell to Coastal Command’s 236 Squadron, and more specifically Flight Lieutenant Alfred Gatward and his navigator Sergeant George Fern, to undertake what was an unusual, if not unique, operation. Their mission was, as Gatward himself later recalled, to “fly low level down the Champs-Élysées, strafe the parade, and if that failed attack the Gestapo HQ in the former Ministère de la Marine”.
Throughout early June 1942, Gatward and Fern made three sorties across the Channel but each time returned due to a lack of cloud cover on the route. Then, at 11.15 hours on 12 June 1942, their aircraft, Bristol Beaufighter Mk.IC T4800 ND-C, again lifted off, despite the pouring rain, from RAF Thorney Island. This time they were also carrying a Tricolour which the two men had been instructed to drop over the Arc de Triomphe – in fact Gatward cut the flag in half and had the parachute section sew iron bars into the material.
As the aircraft crossed the French coast the rain stopped and, perhaps in keeping with the symbolism of the moment, the sun came out. “We were rarely above 100ft and often down at 30ft”, George Fern recalled. “I took photographs all the way to the target ... this was because we had no other way of confirming that we’d been to Paris. We kept our speed to about 220mph ...”
Then, with the French capital visible in the distance, a bird which “fluttered up from the top of a tree that the ’plane had grazed”, slammed into the Beaufighter’s oil cooler radiator. The oil temperature gauge immediately started to read erratically and the temperature to increase. But, as Gatward could “see the Eiffel Tower sticking up like a match-stick”, he decided to continue. At 12.27 hours exactly, he banked to port and headed towards the Champs-Elysees.
“I’ll never forget the astonishment of the crowd in the Paris streets as we swept low at rooftop level”, he subsequently recalled. “They had been taken completely by surprise”.
Unfortunately, the intelligence source had reported the time of the parade incorrectly. The British airmen were too early! Fern, however, who was described as a “quiet ex-schoolmaster from the Forest of Dean”, released the first half of the Tricolour down the flare chute over the Arc de Triomphe, before reaching for his camera to take the images we see here.
A reporter for the magazine Life later described what happened next, drawing on an interview with both Gatward and Fern: “The ’plane roared on down the Champs-Élysées at roof-top height, flying low over the horse-chestnut trees, right between the buildings, passing the Grand Palace”.
Gatward, meanwhile, had sighted the Ministère de la Marine in the Place de la Concorde. Heading south over the River Seine, he banked round and returned. “... Gatward nosed his ’plane down”, continued the Life reporter, “and sprayed Nazi GHQ from top to bottom with shells from his four 20mm cannon”. To Gatward’s “delight”, the “terrified SS troops” who occupied the building “were seen running for their lives”.
To Sergeant Fern, as his captain turned for home, this was the perfect moment to release the second half of the Tricolour, which duly floated down over the Paris rooftops. The airmen later learnt that German troops had been waiting for the parade in the side streets, but the whole ceremony was abandoned because of the confusion caused by the attack.
Two hours and fifty-five minutes after they had taken off, Gatward’s and Fern’s Beaufighter landed back on British soil. With the reports of their flight having a propaganda value at home that was as big, if not larger, than on the opposite side of the English Channel, the two men became instant ‘stars’, fêted everywhere they went. For Gatward, it also meant the award of a Distinguished Flying Cross.
