Cardinal Puff
14th Jul 2010, 12:55
From AfAv. Thanks to Wanderer...
Thought the folks here may enjoy this.
Roll out the barrel: The Valentia incident of August 1940
Flight Sergeant Jim Kirkwood’s version of the Valentia incident was far more interesting than its description in the 2nd World War books. Since I heard the story from him in the early 80s, I have come across several references to the incident.
The closest I came to the place where the actual event took place was in November 2001, on my way back from Addis Ababa. I reached Lake Turkana at Loyangalani on the eastern shore of Lake, where I turned southwards. If I had turned north, to the northern end of the Lake, this is where I would have found Lokitaung, on the Ethiopia/Kenya border. At Todenyang, a couple of kilometres into Ethiopia, was an Italian military fort sited on top of a koppie. It was this fort, known as Fort Namoroputh that found itself at the receiving end of the Valentia’s efforts.
The incident is well recorded in James Ambrose Brown’s ‘A Gathering of Eagles’, the official account of the campaigns of the SAAF in Italian East Africa, June 1940 to November 1941. Brown again alludes to it in his later ‘The War of a Hundred Days’. Other references are Ken Anderson’s ‘Nine Flames’ and Carl Birkby’s ‘Springbok Victory’. Kirkwood, however, referred to detail which the official versions were inclined to pass over. During the 2nd World War he served as an armourer in various bomber squadrons, also during the East African campaign where he must have picked up his version of the story.
The records of the Valentia incident refer to it as a top secret Air Force operation. Not a secret for the Italians, but for the SAAF itself. After it had happened, all those in the know were sworn to secrecy, not a word was supposed to be mentioned about it. However, it was when the Intelligence Department picked up a radio broadcast from Rome providing an account of a squadron of RAF bombers attacking an Italian fort and being driven off by anti-aircraft fire that the SAAF started to put the pieces together.
Perhaps it would be useful to explain what a Valentia is. Birkby refers to a Valentia as a ‘flying omnibus’ or a ‘flying hencoop’. In hindsight, it would be an overstatement that the design of the Valentia made no extraordinary contribution to the science of flying. Taken into service by the RAF in 1934, it was a two-engined transport biplane of wood and fabric construction, with two pilots sitting in an open cockpit on top of an enclosed cabin. With a wingspan of 26.3 metres and an all-up weight of 8,800 kilogrammes, it could carry 22 passengers. In a steep dive – with emphasis on steep – it could manage an actual airspeed of around 90 knots.
Kirkwood adds a few pieces of information, vital in terms of the narrative of the incident at Fort Namoroputh. He explained that the communication between the flying crew in the cockpit and the passengers in the cabin would have been via a long voice tube, which, given the proximity of the two 485 kilowatt radial engines, would have necessitated short, sharp monosyllable instructions shouted at top volume. He added that the passenger door at the rear of the cabin was of a narrow design with a low door sill, not particularly suited to the loading of heavy objects.
It is at this stage that we have to become better acquainted with some of the characters that played a part in the operation. On the ground at Lokitaung was Joe Lentzner, a subaltern in the South African Engineer Corps, who was in charge of a detachment of sappers of 36 Water Supply Company drilling for water. One late afternoon at Lokitaung arrived a Fairy Battle light bomber of No 11 Squadron, piloted by Captain Jannie de Wet, performing an emergency landing after losing his way returning from a sortie into Ethiopia. For the record, this is the same Jannie de Wet that I refer to in ‘In Search of a Fourth Dimension’, who led the No 15 Squadron detachment that disappeared in the vicinity of Kufra in the Libyan Desert in April 1942. Contact was eventually made with the higher headquarters, and the decision was made to recover the Fairy Battle that was badly needed for the South African war effort against the Italians.
And so it happened that on August 14, 1940, Lieutenant Oliver Carey of the SAAF landed at Lokitaung with his Valentia, carrying mechanics and spare parts needed to restore the Fairy Battle into an airworthy condition. Carey (in some war records referred to as Charles Kearey) had previously flown for Imperial Airways and before that in Palestine, and his ambition was to become a bomber pilot. Despite this, he had been relegated to flying mail to remote bases across Kenya’s notorious Northern Frontier District, on occasion also delivering spare parts for combat squadrons or evacuating casualties. The aerial postmen on Carey’s crew were Sergeants Frank Squares, the radio operator, and Ted Armour, the flight engineer. Accompanying them on this trip was Lieutenant Oscar Coetzee, a No 2 Squadron fighter pilot who was supposed to familiarise himself with the geography of the Turkana area.
Carey’s landing at Lokitaung had to be at dusk, considering the closeness of Fort Namoroputh a couple of kilometres away. It was because of the fort, that Joe Lentzner advised Carey to time his departure before first light the following day. Kirkwood’s version was that Carey needed no reminder of this situation, as the Italians in the fort had taken potshots at his Valentia when he carried out his final approach. Perhaps it was his silent ambition, or the sight of the broken down Fairy Battle, or the fact that he had as part of his crew a fighter pilot, that made Carey to remark that, if his plane had been equipped with a bomb, he could have bombed the fort when he left the next day. ‘n Boer maak ‘n plan. Lentzner immediately offered to make him a bomb, on condition that he could accompany Carey on the mission.
An empty 200-litre fuel drum was converted into a bomb casing. Into the casing went an assorted pile of scrap, including bolts and nuts, plough shares, cast iron taken from an old stove, a scale, a sewing machine and a broken differential taken from a truck. Anderson writes that the bulk of the shrapnel was made up of sewing machine parts that they found in an Indian store. Primary charges were distributed around the 380 sticks of gelignite weighing about 60 kilogrammes, making up the main exploding charge. To this was connected a 60-second safety fuse, protruding from a hole drilled into the side of the casing. A 100-metre length of bloudraad (fencing wire) was bound around the drum to keep it in one piece upon impact. All of this added to the bomb’s considerable weight. Whilst Lentzner and his team of sappers were preparing the bomb, Carey was instructed in the intricate procedures of low-level bomb attack by the crew of the Fairy Battle.
Kirkwood refers to the sapper ground crew mustering additional support to assist in the horizontal loading of the bomb through the narrow door, after which it was turned upright and fastened with ropes between the seats. In ‘Nine Flames’ Anderson mentions that ‘...at 4 a.m. the transport pilot was called to inspect this masterpiece of the South African armaments industry’. After a lengthy technical discussion, it was decided to remove the door, and a number of mattresses laid down on the floor of the cabin to protect the crew from enemy fire during the bomb run.
The take-off was uneventful, after which Carey turned east towards the Lake to maintain a holding pattern awaiting first light. By the time the fort became visible; Carey turned towards the land, levelled out in a direct low-level approach, and opened the throttles to its maximum setting. Appropriate to the occasion, he stuck to the formal bomb run procedures having carefully written them down during his impromptu instruction the previous evening. His first instruction into the voice tube was ‘O-p-e-n B-o-m-b D-o-o-r-s!’ which was superfluous for the reason that the door had been removed before take-off. The command did however prompt the cabin crew, comprising Squares and Armour, with Lentzner temporally attached as bombardier, to unfasten the ropes and push the bomb closer towards the open door space.
The second instruction was ‘P-r-e-p-a-r-e T-o D-r-o-p B-o-m-b!’, which implied that Lentzner should light the safety fuse. After several attempts when the draught kept blowing the matches out, Lentzner ducked inside the cabin, lit a cigarette, and used this to light the end of the safety fuse. By now the Italians had become aware of the impending attack, and had turned their machine-guns on the Valentia. Given the maximum speed of the aircraft, the bomb-run was a lengthy affair, presenting the Italian garrison opportune time to put their gunnery skills into practice. In the co-pilot seat Coetzee took a hit in the foot, while a splinter from the instrument panel cut Carey’s forehead.
Eventually came the command ‘D-r-o-p T-h-e B-o-m-b!’. For a brief moment it appeared that there was no reaction. Then a desperate response from cabin to cockpit via the voice tube ‘T-h-e D-o-o-r I-s N-o-t B-i-g E-n-o-u-g-h!’. The upright drum was too high to squeeze through the low doorframe, and too heavy for the three crew to lower on its side. Without hesitation came Carey’s command ‘M-a-k-e T-h-e D-o-o-r B-i-g-g-e-r!’. And the door was made bigger. Lentzner attacked the door sill with an axe, and with a concerted shove of all three crew the bomb was pushed out, added by a desperate lateral manoeuvre by Carey to assist in the effort. Birkby’s version of the event refers to the crew singing in chorus ‘Roll out the Barrel’ as they pushed the bomb clear of the aircraft.
I recall Kirkwood pausing with intent at this stage of his narrative. He would then introduce three likely scenarios, and leave it to the audience to decide. The first was that it was a potshot hit on the fort, blowing it to smithereens, with great loss of life on the Italian side. The second was that the bomb overshot the target, and detonated harmlessly in the distance. The third, which was the scenario that Kirkwood was inclined to propagate, was that the bomb dropped into the midst of the fort, with all the Italians taking cover. Nothing happened until eventually they raised their heads, and then the bomb detonated, killing a couple of Italians and wounding several others. In Birkby’s version the bomb dropped into the courtyard, trundled across until it came to rest against a wall, and then, as a group of enemy troops gathered around in curiosity, blew up with a bang that rocked the Valentia. Birkby accounts for nine dead Italians and 16 Askaris.
Carey landed at Lokitaung to drop Lentzner and to survey the damage to the Valentia. Ninety-three bullet holes were counted in the wings and fuselage. An Indian doctor bandaged Coetzee’s foot, described as a wound resulting from treading on a piece of glass. Typical SAAF ground crew ingenuity was applied to explain the bullet holes and damaged door. Then came the Radio Roma communiqué. By the time the official enquiry had been completed, it was a case of severe reprimands all round for the bombing crew, and, eventually, a transfer for Carey to a bomber squadron. Strangely no medals were awarded for the operation.
Thought the folks here may enjoy this.
Roll out the barrel: The Valentia incident of August 1940
Flight Sergeant Jim Kirkwood’s version of the Valentia incident was far more interesting than its description in the 2nd World War books. Since I heard the story from him in the early 80s, I have come across several references to the incident.
The closest I came to the place where the actual event took place was in November 2001, on my way back from Addis Ababa. I reached Lake Turkana at Loyangalani on the eastern shore of Lake, where I turned southwards. If I had turned north, to the northern end of the Lake, this is where I would have found Lokitaung, on the Ethiopia/Kenya border. At Todenyang, a couple of kilometres into Ethiopia, was an Italian military fort sited on top of a koppie. It was this fort, known as Fort Namoroputh that found itself at the receiving end of the Valentia’s efforts.
The incident is well recorded in James Ambrose Brown’s ‘A Gathering of Eagles’, the official account of the campaigns of the SAAF in Italian East Africa, June 1940 to November 1941. Brown again alludes to it in his later ‘The War of a Hundred Days’. Other references are Ken Anderson’s ‘Nine Flames’ and Carl Birkby’s ‘Springbok Victory’. Kirkwood, however, referred to detail which the official versions were inclined to pass over. During the 2nd World War he served as an armourer in various bomber squadrons, also during the East African campaign where he must have picked up his version of the story.
The records of the Valentia incident refer to it as a top secret Air Force operation. Not a secret for the Italians, but for the SAAF itself. After it had happened, all those in the know were sworn to secrecy, not a word was supposed to be mentioned about it. However, it was when the Intelligence Department picked up a radio broadcast from Rome providing an account of a squadron of RAF bombers attacking an Italian fort and being driven off by anti-aircraft fire that the SAAF started to put the pieces together.
Perhaps it would be useful to explain what a Valentia is. Birkby refers to a Valentia as a ‘flying omnibus’ or a ‘flying hencoop’. In hindsight, it would be an overstatement that the design of the Valentia made no extraordinary contribution to the science of flying. Taken into service by the RAF in 1934, it was a two-engined transport biplane of wood and fabric construction, with two pilots sitting in an open cockpit on top of an enclosed cabin. With a wingspan of 26.3 metres and an all-up weight of 8,800 kilogrammes, it could carry 22 passengers. In a steep dive – with emphasis on steep – it could manage an actual airspeed of around 90 knots.
Kirkwood adds a few pieces of information, vital in terms of the narrative of the incident at Fort Namoroputh. He explained that the communication between the flying crew in the cockpit and the passengers in the cabin would have been via a long voice tube, which, given the proximity of the two 485 kilowatt radial engines, would have necessitated short, sharp monosyllable instructions shouted at top volume. He added that the passenger door at the rear of the cabin was of a narrow design with a low door sill, not particularly suited to the loading of heavy objects.
It is at this stage that we have to become better acquainted with some of the characters that played a part in the operation. On the ground at Lokitaung was Joe Lentzner, a subaltern in the South African Engineer Corps, who was in charge of a detachment of sappers of 36 Water Supply Company drilling for water. One late afternoon at Lokitaung arrived a Fairy Battle light bomber of No 11 Squadron, piloted by Captain Jannie de Wet, performing an emergency landing after losing his way returning from a sortie into Ethiopia. For the record, this is the same Jannie de Wet that I refer to in ‘In Search of a Fourth Dimension’, who led the No 15 Squadron detachment that disappeared in the vicinity of Kufra in the Libyan Desert in April 1942. Contact was eventually made with the higher headquarters, and the decision was made to recover the Fairy Battle that was badly needed for the South African war effort against the Italians.
And so it happened that on August 14, 1940, Lieutenant Oliver Carey of the SAAF landed at Lokitaung with his Valentia, carrying mechanics and spare parts needed to restore the Fairy Battle into an airworthy condition. Carey (in some war records referred to as Charles Kearey) had previously flown for Imperial Airways and before that in Palestine, and his ambition was to become a bomber pilot. Despite this, he had been relegated to flying mail to remote bases across Kenya’s notorious Northern Frontier District, on occasion also delivering spare parts for combat squadrons or evacuating casualties. The aerial postmen on Carey’s crew were Sergeants Frank Squares, the radio operator, and Ted Armour, the flight engineer. Accompanying them on this trip was Lieutenant Oscar Coetzee, a No 2 Squadron fighter pilot who was supposed to familiarise himself with the geography of the Turkana area.
Carey’s landing at Lokitaung had to be at dusk, considering the closeness of Fort Namoroputh a couple of kilometres away. It was because of the fort, that Joe Lentzner advised Carey to time his departure before first light the following day. Kirkwood’s version was that Carey needed no reminder of this situation, as the Italians in the fort had taken potshots at his Valentia when he carried out his final approach. Perhaps it was his silent ambition, or the sight of the broken down Fairy Battle, or the fact that he had as part of his crew a fighter pilot, that made Carey to remark that, if his plane had been equipped with a bomb, he could have bombed the fort when he left the next day. ‘n Boer maak ‘n plan. Lentzner immediately offered to make him a bomb, on condition that he could accompany Carey on the mission.
An empty 200-litre fuel drum was converted into a bomb casing. Into the casing went an assorted pile of scrap, including bolts and nuts, plough shares, cast iron taken from an old stove, a scale, a sewing machine and a broken differential taken from a truck. Anderson writes that the bulk of the shrapnel was made up of sewing machine parts that they found in an Indian store. Primary charges were distributed around the 380 sticks of gelignite weighing about 60 kilogrammes, making up the main exploding charge. To this was connected a 60-second safety fuse, protruding from a hole drilled into the side of the casing. A 100-metre length of bloudraad (fencing wire) was bound around the drum to keep it in one piece upon impact. All of this added to the bomb’s considerable weight. Whilst Lentzner and his team of sappers were preparing the bomb, Carey was instructed in the intricate procedures of low-level bomb attack by the crew of the Fairy Battle.
Kirkwood refers to the sapper ground crew mustering additional support to assist in the horizontal loading of the bomb through the narrow door, after which it was turned upright and fastened with ropes between the seats. In ‘Nine Flames’ Anderson mentions that ‘...at 4 a.m. the transport pilot was called to inspect this masterpiece of the South African armaments industry’. After a lengthy technical discussion, it was decided to remove the door, and a number of mattresses laid down on the floor of the cabin to protect the crew from enemy fire during the bomb run.
The take-off was uneventful, after which Carey turned east towards the Lake to maintain a holding pattern awaiting first light. By the time the fort became visible; Carey turned towards the land, levelled out in a direct low-level approach, and opened the throttles to its maximum setting. Appropriate to the occasion, he stuck to the formal bomb run procedures having carefully written them down during his impromptu instruction the previous evening. His first instruction into the voice tube was ‘O-p-e-n B-o-m-b D-o-o-r-s!’ which was superfluous for the reason that the door had been removed before take-off. The command did however prompt the cabin crew, comprising Squares and Armour, with Lentzner temporally attached as bombardier, to unfasten the ropes and push the bomb closer towards the open door space.
The second instruction was ‘P-r-e-p-a-r-e T-o D-r-o-p B-o-m-b!’, which implied that Lentzner should light the safety fuse. After several attempts when the draught kept blowing the matches out, Lentzner ducked inside the cabin, lit a cigarette, and used this to light the end of the safety fuse. By now the Italians had become aware of the impending attack, and had turned their machine-guns on the Valentia. Given the maximum speed of the aircraft, the bomb-run was a lengthy affair, presenting the Italian garrison opportune time to put their gunnery skills into practice. In the co-pilot seat Coetzee took a hit in the foot, while a splinter from the instrument panel cut Carey’s forehead.
Eventually came the command ‘D-r-o-p T-h-e B-o-m-b!’. For a brief moment it appeared that there was no reaction. Then a desperate response from cabin to cockpit via the voice tube ‘T-h-e D-o-o-r I-s N-o-t B-i-g E-n-o-u-g-h!’. The upright drum was too high to squeeze through the low doorframe, and too heavy for the three crew to lower on its side. Without hesitation came Carey’s command ‘M-a-k-e T-h-e D-o-o-r B-i-g-g-e-r!’. And the door was made bigger. Lentzner attacked the door sill with an axe, and with a concerted shove of all three crew the bomb was pushed out, added by a desperate lateral manoeuvre by Carey to assist in the effort. Birkby’s version of the event refers to the crew singing in chorus ‘Roll out the Barrel’ as they pushed the bomb clear of the aircraft.
I recall Kirkwood pausing with intent at this stage of his narrative. He would then introduce three likely scenarios, and leave it to the audience to decide. The first was that it was a potshot hit on the fort, blowing it to smithereens, with great loss of life on the Italian side. The second was that the bomb overshot the target, and detonated harmlessly in the distance. The third, which was the scenario that Kirkwood was inclined to propagate, was that the bomb dropped into the midst of the fort, with all the Italians taking cover. Nothing happened until eventually they raised their heads, and then the bomb detonated, killing a couple of Italians and wounding several others. In Birkby’s version the bomb dropped into the courtyard, trundled across until it came to rest against a wall, and then, as a group of enemy troops gathered around in curiosity, blew up with a bang that rocked the Valentia. Birkby accounts for nine dead Italians and 16 Askaris.
Carey landed at Lokitaung to drop Lentzner and to survey the damage to the Valentia. Ninety-three bullet holes were counted in the wings and fuselage. An Indian doctor bandaged Coetzee’s foot, described as a wound resulting from treading on a piece of glass. Typical SAAF ground crew ingenuity was applied to explain the bullet holes and damaged door. Then came the Radio Roma communiqué. By the time the official enquiry had been completed, it was a case of severe reprimands all round for the bombing crew, and, eventually, a transfer for Carey to a bomber squadron. Strangely no medals were awarded for the operation.