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Auction: 17001 - Orders, Decorations and Medals
Lot: 254

'We did our "live" dropping practice at Tatton Park. On the first day there was a 40 m.p.h. wind blowing and a consultation was held with the Army as to whether the exercise should go ahead. The leader of the detachment, a tough Scotsman with the rank of Major, expressed the view that a little wind would add reality to the proceedings. It did. The Major was dragged across a field by his parachute and through a pond, ending up in a hedge. His second-in-command lodged up in a tree, and one of his men struck a post with sufficient force to break two ribs and an ankle. Nothing daunted the Army pronounced it "a very good day" and, to our respect, turned up next morning in readiness for some more of the same punishment.'

Flight Lieutenant Denis Hornsey, D.F.C., of No. 78 Squadron, describes a paratroop training exercise in the lead up to Operation "Colossus".

An important 'airborne operations' pioneer's D.F.C. and Bar group of six awarded to Squadron Leader A. D. 'Webby' Webb, Royal Air Force, who, as cited in the recommendation for his first D.F.C., displayed 'an outstanding desire to come to grips with the enemy': that desire resulted in his enrolment in the first ever British airborne operation of the Second World War - Operation "Colossus" - the gallant attack mounted by trail-blazing parachutists of the Churchillian-inspired X Troop, 11th Special Air Service (S.A.S.) Battalion, on the Tragino Aqueduct in Southern Italy in February 1941

The aircrew chosen to convey X Troop's warriors to the Dropping Zone were likewise hand-picked, just six directly employed Whitleys taking off from R.A.F. Luqa, Malta on the night in question. They were led by Wing Commander J. B. 'Willie' Tait and - at around 500 feet - sent such characters as Tony Deane-Drummond on their way: a notable cast of wartime names that - in common with Squadron Leader Webb - set in motion the emergence of British airborne operations

Distinguished Flying Cross, G.VI.R., with Second Award Bar, the reverse of the Cross officially dated '1941' and the reverse of the Bar '1945'; 1939-45 Star; Air Crew Europe Star; Italy Star; Defence and War Medals 1939-45, mounted court-style as worn, generally very fine or better (6)

D.F.C. London Gazette 22 August 1941. The original recommendation states:

'Flying Officer Webb has completed 26 sorties, including the Colossus operation.

Throughout this period he has shown an outstanding desire to come to grips with the enemy by his keenness and willingness to take part in operations on every possible occasion.

His skill as an Air Gunner and his example and leadership to his fellow Air Gunners have been of the utmost value.'

Bar to D.F.C. London Gazette 16 January 1945. The original recommendation states:

'Since being awarded the D.F.C. for meritorious service carried out over Italy on 10 February 1941, during the course of his first operational tour, Squadron Leader Webb has continued to operate in his second tour with unremitting zeal and enthusiasm.

His first tour consisted of 25 sorties which were carried out in Whitley aircraft, and he has completed 16 sorties, with a total of 70.21 flying hours, in his second tour.

Throughout he has set an example of excellent airmanship, cool judgment and determination, which has been an inspiration to the rest of the Squadron.

His leadership in the capacity of Flight Commander has contributed in no small measure to the success of the Squadron, maintaining morale at a very high level, and is worthy of the highest praise.

Squadron Leader Webb is an ideal leader of men, who has consistently shown great devotion to duty and fully merits the award of a Bar to his D.F.C.'

Remarks by Station Commander:

'Squadron Leader Webb has commanded his Flight with great distinction during his service with 77 Squadron. Although not a member of a crew, he has shown great eagerness to fly as Air Gunner and on several occasions has occupied the mid-under turret during trials with the modified gun installation. He has set a fine example not only to his Flight but to the whole Squadron, and he is strongly recommended for the award of a Bar to his D.F.C.'

Alfred Denys Webb was born in Chester in January 1913, the son of the Rev. A. W. Webb, formerly curate of St. Peter's Church, Chester.

On leaving school young Alfred entered the Merchant Navy and served as a cadet for the New Zealand Steamship Company. It was in this capacity, whilst serving in the S.S. Northumberland, that he was landed to assist in rescue operations in Napier, following the serious earthquake of 2 February 1931. His ship had been at anchor in Hawkes Bay when the earthquake struck.

In 1936, Webb departed the Merchant Navy and enlisted in the Royal Air Force. Commissioned Pilot Officer, he qualified as an Air Gunner at R.A.F. Penrhos in April 1940 and was posted to No. 78 Squadron, a Whitley unit operating out of Linton-on-Ouse, Yorkshire, in the following month.

Opening account: Berlin, capital ships and much flak over the Dortmund-Ems Canal

Having joined Pilot Officer J. R. Denny's crew as rear gunner, he completed his first operational sortie - an attack on the marshalling yards at Hamm - on the night of 21 July. Three more sorties were flown before the month's end, namely strikes against Osnabruck, Sterkrade and the Dornier works at Wismar.

Webb's next operational outing, an attack on the oil refinery at Monheim on the night of 3-4 August 1940, proved more eventful: owing to lack of fuel his pilot had to undertake a forced landing in a turnip field at Market Weighton. Possibly Denny was slightly injured in the process, for a few nights later - on the 9th - Webb flew as rear gunner to Squadron Leader Wildey in an attack on Mannheim.

With Denny back at the helm by mid-August, Webb next participated in strikes on Heringen and Bordeaux, followed by four further sorties in September, including an attack on the Scharnhorst, Hipper and Lutzow at Kiel on the night of the 25th and a trip to Berlin on the night of the 28th.

Having then flown a sortie against the oil refinery at Sterkrade on the first day of October, Webb flew as rear gunner to Wing Commander Whitworth in a strike against Stettin on the 11th, and to Squadron Leader Wildey in an attack on the docks at Hamburg on the 27th. He ended the month with Denny back at the helm in an attack on the heavily defended Dortmund Ems Canal, his flying log book noting that his Whitley was hit in six places.

In November-December 1940, Webb attended the Central Gunnery School, where he qualified as Gunnery Leader, prior to returning to 78 Squadron in the new year and completing a sortie against the oil plant at Gelsenkirchen on 9 January. A few days later, he was detached for special duties, flying to Woodford with Wing Commander J. B.'Willie' Tait, D.F.C., who had been appointed to command a secret foray into enemy territory: they were about to participate in the first ever airborne operation mounted by Churchill's newly founded parachute force - X Troop.

Operation "Colossus"

In June 1940, Winston Churchill instructed his Chief of Staff, General Ismay, to establish 'a corps of at least five thousand parachute troops'. In so doing he set in motion the foundation of one of the most celebrated corps to enter the annals of British military history. The selection committee set about recruiting those with toughness of mind and body, and possessed by a determination to get to grips to the enemy. As a result, three quarters of the original applicants were returned to their units. Following extensive parachute training at Ringway, however, the remaining applicants were ready to tackle their first operational deployment.

The resultant operation - "Colossus" - has been described in numerous Commando and airborne histories, not least in Raymond Foxall's aptly entitled Guinea Pigs. Of particular interest from the R.A.F's perspective is the unpublished wartime memoir of Flight Lieutenant Denis Hornsey, D.F.C., who participated in the raid; the manuscript is held in the Department of Documents at the Imperial War Museum in London.

The eventual parachute team - named X Troop - comprised seven officers and 31 men drawn from the ranks of the 11th S.A.S. Battalion, late No. 2 Commando, the whole commanded by Major T. A. G. Pritchard, M.B.E., Royal Welsh Fusiliers, who was to win a D.S.O. for the raid.

As related by Flight Lieutenant Denis Hornsey, 'on our second day at Ringway we were all assembled in the C.O's office and were told that the object of our mission was now to be disclosed'. The target was Tragino Aqueduct in Southern Italy, six hand-picked Whitley crews being charged with delivering the men and equipment of X Troop by parachute, and two others assigned to diversionary attacks over Foggia. The C.O. added:

"I need hardly say that this is a mission in which the greatest secrecy is necessary. All operations are top secret but this one is more than top secret. In fact, it is my unpleasant task to mention to you that anybody found guilty of disclosing details of this operation, whether by carelessness or intent, will be instantly shot. Some clues have already leaked out through injudicious talking. It will go ill with those responsible when we find out who they are."

Hornsey continues:

'Step by step he unfolded the plan. We were to fly to Mildenhall to get our aircraft bombed up and loaded with the necessary supplies and stores. We would then fly to Malta and, when the weather was favourable, operate from there. Meanwhile, our aircraft had to be converted for the carriage and dropping of parachute troops, and we had to train on other aircraft, with the troops we were to drop, while the modification work proceeded. Any spare time had to be spent studying and familiarising ourselves with the model [of the aqueduct] until we knew it by heart and could recognise the dropping zone from any angle.'

Locating the Dropping Zone (D.Z.) was just one feature in a catalogue of challenges that faced the R.A.F. aircrew for the aqueduct was located in a valley surrounded by high mountain peaks and hills. This entailed the Whitleys having to skirt the lower slopes of the mountains in order to drop to 500 feet to release their paratoops, thereby leaving little time and margin for error to clear the peaks once the drop had been undertaken:

'To get to the dropping height of 500 feet we had to lob over relatively low parts of the mountains and fly down the valley with flaps and under-carriage lowered to slow down our speed. The under-carriage then had to be raised, the paratroops baling out immediately after, and full emergency boost and maximum revs employed to life us over a 6,000 feet high range of hills which at this time would be about two miles in front of us. Even with a rate of climb of 1,000 feet a minute and a ground speed of two miles a minute it was necessary to make a steep climbing turn instantly the men had baled out, since in the time it would take to reach the hills straight ahead we could only get up to less than a third of the height required to clear them.'

Yet probably the greatest concern for the participating aircrew was the lack of space inside their newly converted Whitleys: the fuselage bulged with stores, the long-range tanks overflowed with petrol and the bomb bays were crammed with explosive for the paratroops to use on their objective. The prospect of an encounter with enemy aircraft - or a forced landing - was dreaded by all. By way of example, on departure from Mildenhall to Malta, Hornsey's aircraft was 'crammed tight with spares of every description, to say nothing of hot water bottles and thermos flasks for each one of the five parachute troops we were carrying.' He continues:

'The crew's cabin was chock-a-block with kit and suitcases - so much so that it all had to be piled in after we got in. When the front hatch was closed a suitcase had to be put on it and a six foot long spare propeller blade across it, so that our chances of getting out, if our overloaded aircraft got into difficulties, were negligible.'

"Colossus" was finally given the green light on 7 February 1941, when the participating Whitleys departed Mildenhall on their hazardous trip of 1,600 miles to R.A.F. Luqa, Malta. Webb was assigned to the crew of Whitley T4215 'J for Johnnie', skippered by Sub. Lieutenant Hoad, R.N., who had been seconded to the R.A.F. and had honed his skills in a practice parachute drop over Tatton Park on the first day of February.

Given the negligible chances of getting out of their overladen aircraft in the event of an emergency, the journey over France was deemed hazardous in the extreme. As it happened, only one of the Whitleys encountered an enemy aircraft, Webb's 'J for Johnnie', but, as related by his passenger Captain G. F. K. Daly, R.E., 'the rear gunner [Webb] had been in action several times' and the offending Me. 109 was driven off (Guinea Pigs, refers).

After an interesting interlude in Malta - where Luqa was regularly visited by enemy aircraft - the men of Operation "Colossus" braced themselves for the 'off'. A late batch of photographs of the aqueduct, obtained by P.R.U. pilot and Malta legend, Flying Officer 'Warby' Warburton, D.S.O., D.F.C., provided one or two last minute surprises for planners and participants alike, but in the early evening hours of 10 February, aircrew and paratroops embarked on the first ever British airborne operation. Hornsey recalls the Whitleys taxiing out of their blast pens and 'waiting in the growing dusk at the end of the flarepath for permission to take-off.'

Owing to icing problems, Hoad lifted 'J for Johnnie' off the runway about 30 minutes behind schedule. It was a tardy departure that would have a significant impact on the delivery of the embarked paratroops under Captain Daly, R.E. A tense flight of six hours ensued and due to having been separated from the other Whitleys, 'J for Johnnie' ended up dropping Daly and his team in a valley about two miles from the dedicated Dropping Zone (D.Z.) near the Tragino Aqueduct.

As it transpired, another major glitch was unfolding at the aqueduct itself, where the first team of parachutists had arrived under the command of Tony Deane-Drummond: rather than being constructed of masonry, as they had been led to believe, the aqueduct turned out to be made of reinforced concrete. As Deane-Drummond would recount in Return Ticket, the question now arose as to whether X Troop had enough explosives to do the job.

Undeterred, he and his men set to work rounding up local inhabitants and laying a defensive perimeter around the aqueduct, whilst 2nd Lieutenant G. Paterson, R.E., organised the placing of 600lbs of gun cotton against the western pier of the aqueduct. Smaller charges were placed against a supporting buttress and a nearby bridge. When, at length, the charges were fired - around 1230 hours - it transpired their gallant work was not in vain: the sound of 'a great waterfall' rang around the mountains, strengthened by the cheers of the men of X Troop.

Sadly, however, as related in numerous accounts and histories, Churchill's trail-blazing parachutists were quickly rounded up and taken into captivity. Captain Daly and his men, who had exited Webb's Whitley, were well on their way to a rendezvous on the coast when overrun by party of Italian troops. On the plus side - with one notable exception - X Troop suffered no fatalities. That exception was a gallant Italian translator who had volunteered to join the enterprise, an ex-banqueting manager at London's Savoy hotel by the name of Fortunato Picchi. He was handed over to the Fascist militia, who tortured and then executed him.

Deane-Drummond managed to make a 'home run' in the fullness of time, thereby permitting his prominent part in further airborne operations, not least Arnhem. He ended the war with a D.S.O. and a brace of M.Cs. 'Willie' Tait likewise journeyed on to senior command, most notably as C.O. of 617 Squadron in the attack on the Tirpitz in her Norwegian lair in 1944. He ended the war with four D.S.Os and a brace of D.F.Cs, a unique record. Such outstanding men win wars and their illustrious careers were born out of the trials and tribulations of "Colossus", an operation that proved beyond doubt that Churchill's fledgling parachute corps - with skilled aircrew support - was well capable of delivering the enemy a serious blow. Even though the Italians swiftly repaired the damage caused Tragino Viaduct, "Colossus" set in motion crucial longer term benefits. Raymond Foxall concluded in Guinea Pigs:

'The raid ranks among the most daring of the war, a repeat in modern terms of former exploits - of which Sir Francis Drake's burning of Spanish galleons in Cadiz harbour is one - and it can take its rightful place in the pages of military history.'

On returning to England from Malta on the 18 February, Webb's aircraft, out of fuel, made a forced landing - wheels up - in a field near Swanton Morley. He was recommended for the D.F.C. on 26 June 1941, a reward for his part in "Colossus", a fact confirmed by the opening sentence of the recommendation for the subsequent award of a Bar.

Meanwhile, the Squadron had moved to Middleton St. George, where Webb ended his operational tour with an attack on Bremen on 8 May, as a gunner in Squadron Leader W. H. Williams's crew, and with an attack on Hanover on 19 July, this time as a gunner in Squadron Leader Lawrence's crew. Tour-expired, he was posted H.Q. No. 4 Group.

Second tour

In February 1944, Webb resumed his operational career with a posting to No. 77 Squadron, a Halifax unit. A recently promoted Squadron Leader, he was given command of 'B' Flight. As a gunner Flight C.O., however, he was not a member of one particular crew but instead charged with carrying out a roving brief to replace other Air Gunners, those who had been wounded, were sick or on leave.

By and large he served as a mid-upper gunner but as outlined in the recommendation for his second D.F.C., he also undertook experimental work with the Type R ventral (or under) turret. Around 30 Halifaxes were fitted with this turret type but it proved to be ineffective and the design was abandoned.

Webb's first sortie was an attack on the marshalling yards at Le Mans on 7 March, one of three trips he made to France in the same month.

In mid-May, following his participation in two further sorties, including a strike on the coastal batteries at Berneval, 77 Squadron moved to Sutton. It was from here that Webb and his fellow aircrew commenced a flurry of operations against targets in France in the wake of the Normandy landings: on D Day itself, he participated in an attack on the coastal batteries at Maisy, flying as 2nd pilot to Flight Lieutenant E. G. Hale, A.F.C.

Most of these sorties were of the daylight variety, including strikes against H.Q. 12th Panzer Division on 15 June and enemy troop concentrations near Caen on 17 July, when Webb's Halifax was hit by flak; likewise, during a trip to the rocket installations in Forest of Nieppe on 2 August. A few days later he was detailed to attack enemy troops on the Caen-Falaise road, in addition enemy positions near Le Havre. His final sortie, however, was against Kleve in Germany in October. Webb also led a flight from 77 Squadron as part of Operations "Pluto", ferrying fuel to the Continent. He was awarded a Bar to his D.F.C. and posted to H.Q. No. 7 Group.

Post-war Webb served as a District Director with the Allied Mission to Observe Greek Elections in 1946, followed by an appointment as Gunnery Leader to No. 3 Group 1946-48. Thereafter, following a tour of duty in East Africa, he served in the Secretarial Branch, in which capacity he was still employed at the time of his retirement in the rank of Squadron Leader in early 1962.

Sold with the recipient's original R.A.F. Observer's and Air Gunner's Flying Log Book (Form 1767 type), covering the period March 1940 to December 1953, together with an extensive file of research, with correspondence with veterans of Operation "Colossus", including extracts taken from the unpublished memoirs of Flight Lieutenant Denis Hornsey, D.F.C., a fellow member of 78 Squadron - the complete manuscript is held in the Department of Documents at the Imperial War Museum; First Day covers signed by ex-Colossus participants, Harry 'Lucky' Pexton, Tony Deane-Drummond and 'Willie' Tait; one or two wartime newspaper cuttings and an old menu from the recipient's Merchant Navy days, S.S. Northumberland, Xmas, 1930; a quantity of copied wartime photographs, including the recipient, and one original of a Whitley in flight.

Reference sources:

The Imperial War Museum, 'Here Today - Bomb Tomorrow', Flight Lieutenant Denis Hornsey, D.F.C. (Documents-4559/Catalogue date 1980-03).

The National Archives (TNA), recommendations for D.F.C. and Bar (AIR 2/8899; AIR 2/9039); and 42 Squadron O.R.B. (AIR 27/457).

Britain at War Magazine , February 2011, article 'Action at Last'.

Deane-Drummond, Anthony, Return Ticket (The Popular Book Club, London, 1952); Arrows of Fortune (Leo Cooper, London, 1992).

Foxall, Raymond, The Guinea Pigs (Robert Hale, London, 1981).


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