Ian Fleming and SOE's Operation Postmaster: The Top Secret Story Behind 007: The Untold Top Secret Story

Product Information

seriously hazardous work requiring a special breed of men and women. For example ‘F’ section (France) of SOE In an earlier operation on 3 October 1942, Lieutenant Lassen was part of Operation Basalt, a tiny raiding party that sped across the English Channel to the Channel Island of Sark in a small motor launch named ‘Little Pisser’. Operation Postmaster was a British operation conducted on the Spanish island of Fernando Po, now known as Bioko, off West Africa in the Gulf of Guinea, during the Second World War. The mission was carried out by the Small Scale Raiding Force (SSRF) and the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in January 1942. Their objective was to board the Italian and German ships in the harbour and sail them to Lagos. The SSRF under the command of Major 'Gus' March-Phillipps left Britain in August 1941 and sailed the Brixham trawler, Maid Honour, to the Spanish colony.

Since they had left the Maid Honor behind in West Africa, the SSRF now used a specially adapted Motor Torpedo Boat, MTB 344. Anderson Manor became known as a Commando Camelot, and the SSRF would set out from there for each and every one of its raids, usually sailing from Portland. However, it remained a secret unit, using the code name 62 Commando. Shortt, James; McBride, Angus (1981). The Special Air Service. Osprey Publishing. ISBN 0-85045-396-8. However, Winter was undoubtedly a major inspiration for the Bond character, described by Fleming as having “dark, rather cruel, good looks”.

A Hitch

Born in 1920, Landers Frederik Emil Victor Lassen lived a privileged life in Nyhavn, but also an adventurous one. In Germany radio stations reported that a..."British destroyer had entered the harbour and dropped depth charges to blow up the anchor cables and the ship's crew were shot" and the 21 January 1942 edition of Völkischer Beobachter published an article with the headline "British Denials – Admiralty Lies on Act of Piracy". [25] British Naval Intelligence issued their own communique: The Tunisia Campaign following the Torch landings No. 1 and No. 6 Commandos were involved in first battle of Sedjenane between February and March 1943. [34] with the motor launches the Navy had offered earlier. For the clandestine missions the MTBs engaged in they

Some years later Fleming, who by then had quit banking for a career as a writer, created his Bond character, a Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) agent codenamed 007 and with a licence to kill. Most of the raiders boarded their collapsible boat leaving one man on the MTB, and landed 20 minutes later. Only then did they realise they were in the wrong location – Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer, about a mile from their objective.CWGC headstone March-Phillipps". Commando Veterans Association . http://www.commandoveterans.org/cdoGallery/v/Commando+War+Graves+Memorials+and+Plaques/graves/St+LAURENT+sur+Mer/St_+LAURENT-sur-Mer++comunal+cemetery+_1_.JPG.html . Retrieved 3 June 2010. [ dead link] Centre d'Entraînement de Commandos". Ministère de la Défense,la Composante Terre. Archived from the original on 7 March 2012 . Retrieved 17 April 2010. The force dragged the boat onto the beach and moved towards the village itself, only to see a small German patrol of eight or nine men. A firefight ensued, and the raiders made a fighting retreat to their boat.

and the Channel Islands. He left 344 in May 1943 on appointment to Flotilla 11 at Felixstowe. In January 1943 the SSRF raids were coordinated by Operation Postmaster was a British special operation conducted on the Spanish island of Fernando Po, now known as Bioko, off West Africa in the Gulf of Guinea, during the Second World War. The mission was carried out by the Small Scale Raiding Force (SSRF) and the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in January 1942. Their objective was to board the Italian and German ships in the harbour and sail them to Lagos. The SSRF under the command of Major Gus March-Phillipps left Britain in August 1941 and sailed the Brixham trawler, Maid of Honour, [1] to the Spanish colony. After a voyage lasting six and a half days, the two tugs and their spoils entered Lagos harbour, accompanied by the British corvette H.M.S Violet, which had been sent out to “discover” the Duchessa d’Aosta and the Likomba “adrift” in the open sea and to accompany them to a British port. The illegal seizure (codenamed "Operation Postmaster") could well have damaged relations between Great Britain and Spain, so it was imperative as far as possible to hide the fact that the British were behind this operation.Special Service Brigade comprising No. 3, No. 4, No. 6 and No. 45 (RM) Commandos landed at Ouistreham in Queen Red sector of Sword Beach. No. 4 Commando were augmented by 1 and 8 Troop (both French) of No. 10 (Inter Allied) Commando and were committed for two months to hold the left flank of the D-Day landings. No. 41(RM) Commando (part of 4th Special Service Brigade) landed on the far right of Sword Beach, where 29,000 men would land. [45] No. 48 (RM) Commando landed on Juno Beach, from Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer to Courseulles-sur-Mer, where 21,400 troops would land. No. 46(RM) Commando (part of 4th Special Service Brigade) landed at Juno to scale the cliffs on the left side of the Orne River estuary and destroy a battery. No. 47(RM) Commando (part of 4th Special Service Brigade) landed on the west flank of Gold Beach and captured Port-en-Bessin. In August 1941, Gus and his team of twelve set off for British West Africa. Five of them, including Gus, sailed on the Maid Honor itself. The others travelled in civilian clothes by civilian ships, all carrying false passports issued to them by SOE. Once arrived in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Gus and his men were given codenames by SOE. When Italy entered the Second World War on 10 June 1940, the Lloyd Triestino ship Duchessa d’Aosta was on its way from South Africa to Genoa with a cargo of wool, hides, asbestos and copper. Like many other Italian ships, the Duchessa d’Aosta also sought refuge in a neutral port, in this case Santa Isabel on the island of Fernando Po (today Bioko, the capital of Equatorial Guinea, 750 km southeast of Lagos). Fernando Po was then a Spanish colony and thus neutral territory. The Duchessa d’Aosta and her crew came to spend eighteen months there . As part of the plot, two Soviet defectors were trained for the mission, equipped with special assassination tools, and given a myriad of false documentation to allow them to slip through Soviet lines, get into Moscow and close to Stalin, and kill him. Before the mission, the agents, a man and a woman, had gotten married to each other. The agents were inserted into the Soviet Union via a cargo plane, which crashed. However, the crew and the two agents were unharmed, and the agents set off on a motorcycle. Not all operations were successful and few were as disastrous as the raid on the Greek islands of Halki and Alimnia, when ten agents were captured after being surrounded by German gunboats. Nine of them were executed after being tortured.

The raiders left Lagos in their two tugs on the morning of 11 January 1942, and while en route they practised lowering Folbots and boarding ships at sea under the command of Captain Graham Hayes. They approached Santa Isabel harbour and at 23:15 and 23:30 hours on 14 January 1942; both tugs were in position 180 metres (590ft) outside of the harbour. Onshore, Lippett had arranged for the officers from Duchessa d'Aosta to be invited to a dinner party; 12 Italian officers as well as two German officers from Likomba attended. [16]The Spanish government was furious about the raid, which was seen as a breach of the country's neutrality. The foreign minister Serrano Suner described the operation as an: The details of the raid were being kept secret even from the British Chiefs of Staff, who were only informed on 18 January 1942, that Duchessa d'Aosta had been intercepted 230 miles (370km) offshore and was being taken to Lagos. [8] Maid of Honour, a 65-ton Brixham yacht trawler, left Poole harbour on 9 August 1941, bound for West Africa. [6] The five man crew were under the command of March-Phillipps. [7] The remainder of the SSRF under the command of Captain Geoffrey Appleyard had departed earlier aboard a troop transport ship. On 20 September 1941 after six weeks under sail Maid of Honour arrived at Freetown, Sierra Leone. [8] Freetown was the agreed rendezvous for both groups, Appleyard's party having arrived at the end of August. [8] After Maid of Honour 's arrival in Freetown the search for the German submarine bases started. Sailing into the many rivers and deltas in the area, they failed to locate any submarines or evidence of a submarine base. [7] Gulf of Guinea. Fernando Po, now called Bioko, is the island nearest the mainland. One of the British tugs launched two kayaks. The first of them put two men on board the Likomba, the local guards on which immediately jumped overboard when the crew of the other kayak blew up the anchor chains on the German vessel by means of specially constructed bombs. At the same time, the other British tug slid up alongside the Duchessa d’Aosta and put a boarding party on board. The raiders approached Santa Isabel harbour and at 23.15 and 23.30 on 14 January 1942 both tugs were in position 200 yards (180 m) off the harbour entrance. Onshore, Lippett had arranged for Duchessa d’Aosta's officers to be invited to a dinner party, which 12 Italian officers and also two German officers from Likomba also attended.