User:Geoffkward/Tempsford Taxis

Introduction
Throughout the war years the Resistance Organizations in Norway and, indeed, in the whole of occupied Europe, were dependent upon outside sources for supplies, equipment, ammunition and specialist personnel. In July 1940, the British Special Intelligence Service, (SIS) established a separate unit, Special Operations Executive, (SOE) to organize, assess, and co-ordinate the requests for supplies. At SOE headquarters in Baker Street, London, each occupied country had its own section. SOE was the brainchild of Hugh Dalton but Winston Churchill is credited with exhorting the new unit to “Set Europe Ablaze.” Later, SOE operations extended to all corners of the world-conflict.

Tempsford Airfield
SIS and SOE used the new (March 1942) Tempsford Airfield near Cambridge as a base for many of their most secret operations. With their Hudson, Halifax, Lysander, Stirling and Whitley aircraft the RAF Squadrons 138 & 161, have been referred to as the Moonlight Squadrons, The Cloak and Dagger Squadrons and, perhaps even more tongue-in-cheek, The Tempsford Taxis! The official name was the more prosaic ‘Special Duties’. Whatever the name, General Eisenhower said that the disruption to German troops caused by SOE-supported Resistance Movements throughout occupied Europe played a very considerable part in the complete and final victory.

Night after night, during the period one week before and one week after the full moon, the pilots and crews delivered arms, ammunition, radios and other equipment to pin-pointed areas from the Arctic Circle in Northern Norway to the shores of the Mediterranean. They also delivered and picked up agents, either by parachute or by landing at night in isolated fields, usually relying on simple torches as their landing lights and guidance system.

Tempsford based aircraft, flying out of their forward base at RAF Tangmere on the south coast, dropped supplies to the Czech resistance that led to the ambush and assassination of the "Beast of Prague", S.S. Intelligence Chief Reinhard Heydrich on 27 May 1942. Vincent Auriol, General de Latre de Tassigny and Maquis fighter, Francois Mitterand, were among the important men evacuated from France. Knut Haugland, William Houlder, Gunnar Sønsteby and Reidar Kvaal were just a few of those parachuted into Norway and Andree Borrel, Violette Szabo, Yoland Beekman and Lise de Baussac were four of several female agents, mostly originally French citizens, who were involved with SOE operations. Of the females, only Lise De Baussac survived, the others were captured and murdered.

The pilots and crews at Tempsford came from the whole of occupied Europe as well as from the British Isles and Commonwealth countries.