An Auster observation plane flying over the south-west corner of Lake Comacchio, which has been flooded by German forces.
🗓️ #OTD in 1945 – COPP 2 start a sequence of recce operations on Lake Comacchio in Italy (📸 IWM NA 24093) in the build-up to Operation Roast, a Commando offensive to seize a spit of land between the lake and the Adriatic. #NavalHistory
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An AirAsia plane with its landing gear down coming in low over a sandy beach. People on the beach are standing directly underneath its approach. In the background are trees on prominent hills.
The airfield that COPP 3 surveyed has since grown – it's now Phuket International Airport. Planes approaching from the west fly in low over the beaches that they recce'd (📸 Adobe Stock). /🧵
Meantime the rest of COPP 3 spends the next few nights continuing their recce operations. They gather valuable information (📜 RM Museum) but landings in Phuket are later dropped in favour of earlier-than-anticipated landings on the Malay Peninsula.
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Norman Guthrie photographed after the war leaning on the bar of his pub. He’s sporting a fantastic ‘RAF moustache’.
Guthrie escaped but was captured the following day after being spotted by Thai villagers. He was detained by local authorities and held as a prisoner of war in Bangkok for the rest of the war.
(After the war Guthrie became a publican in Staffordshire; 📸 Hugh Shipman.)
Composite photo showing Johnny Johns’ grave and Taukkyan War Cemetery.
Johns and Cammidge were killed in a subsequent exchange of fire.
Johns is buried in Kranji War Cemetery, Singapore.
Cammidge's body was never recovered. He is commemorated on the Rangoon Memorial in Taukkyan War Cemetery, Rangoon (Yangon). (📸 War Graves Photographic Project)
It's only after the war that their fate becomes known. Despite calm weather, their canoe capsized – possibly partly from being overloaded with additional gear for the airfield recce.
They made it to the shore but then encountered an enemy patrol.
Johnny Johns photographed in Kandy, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) earlier in the war.
Tonight three canoes leave Torbay and paddle in, but contact is soon lost with the 3-man canoe containing Royal Engineers Johnny Johns (📸 Auckland War Memorial Museum) and Fred Cammidge, who have with them an RAF man, Norman Guthrie, who's been attached to COPP 3 for this op.
HMS Torbay surfaced in Plymouth Sound, date unknown.
But now an initial periscope survey reveals considerable enemy activity ashore and lack of cover on the beach, so they decide they'll paddle in each night, carry out their reconnaissance tasks, then return to Torbay each morning (📸 IWM FL 3437).
Period map showing the area on Phuket where Operation Baboon was carried out. The map shows a small airfield just inland from the coast.
🗓️ #OTD in 1945 – COPP 3 men in sub HMS Torbay arrive off Phuket, Thailand, to carry out Operation Baboon. The original intention was to land and stay ashore for a number of nights to carry out recce of the beach and an airfield site. (🗺️ via National Library of Australia) #NavalHistory 🧵
Cover of "Shore Establishments of the Royal Navy - Being list of the Static Ships and Estzzzzzzzz ..."
What's the geekiest book you own? (Asking for a friend.)
View towards submarine base HMS Talbot in Malta, with a handful of submarines in the harbour.
Why were initial COPP losses so high? COHQ's Leslie Moorhouse is tasked with finding out and heads from the UK to HMS Talbot, the sub base in Malta (📸 IWM A 6929), to consult with those COPP men who survived and the various submarine commanders. He'll report by mid-March. /🧵
Map of the beaches considered for Sicily landings, from Admiral Hewitt’s post-Husky report, marked to show locations where COPP teams carried out the first reconnaissance operations. The locations were determined by the initial plans for Operation Husky, which envisaged landings around the island.
Despite heavy losses over a couple of weeks, these early COPP teams have also managed to gather useful intelligence from the Sicilian coast – enough to suggest to the planners that there is merit to the idea of beach reconnaissance.
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A group of four COPP men walking along a road in Algeria – from left to right Bill Spence, Caruth Main, John Seagust and James McGuire.
COPP's disappointments in these initial ops will be added to tomorrow night when James McGuire (📸 far right, Peter Palmer via Simon Hatch) and George Davies leave United to search for Hart and Folder but also fail to return. Again, the eventual news is that they're in captivity.
Archie Hart second from right in a group of four players lining up before a pre-war game for Third Lanark football club, with spectators in a stand behind them.
Further along the coast, Archie Hart (📸 2nd from right pre-war, via 'A History of Third Lanark AC' Facebook group) and Eric Folder fail to return to HMS United.
There will eventually be better news about them: they are both alive but in captivity.
Composite image of Alf Crossley and Victor de Kock.
🗓️ #OTD in 1943 –🕯️Alf Crossley (left) and Victor de Kock (both 📸 via Special Forces Roll of Honour) are the latest men to lose their life during COPP's early recce ops around Sicily.
They fail to return to sub HMS Unrivalled after heading to shore somewhere near Pozzallo. #NavalHistory 🧵
Edward Stanley photographed in Malta, February 1943.
Their carrier vessel, submarine HMS Unbending under the command of Edward Stanley (📸 IWM A 14666), will spend tomorrow searching for them in vain before heading back to Malta. Unbending has lost all three of its COPP officers during this sortie. 2/2
Ted Parsons, George Burbidge and Noel Cooper, with Neville McHarg behind them, photographed at COPP’s base in Algeria earlier in 1943.
🗓️ #OTD in 1943 – George Burbidge (centre) and Noel Cooper (front right) lose their lives during reconnaissance off Sicily. They're the latest losses suffered during early COPP ops after being rushed out from Britain. #NavalHistory 1/2
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Air reconnaissance photo showing the area around what became Easy Beach during the Letpan landings. Letpan is out of shot to the east, off the bottom of the image.
🗓️ #OTD in 1945 – COPP 1 carries out a second recce in the build-up to the Letpan landings in Burma (Myanmar). They look at a site that later becomes Easy Beach, where artillery guns will land to support the main landings. (📸 Jack Crane family) #NavalHistory
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Ted Parsons earlier in the year, sitting on rocks on the coast of Algeria.
🗓️ #OTD in 1943 – COPP 4's Ted Parsons (📸 Peter Palmer via Simon Hatch) and Clifford Irvine fail to return to sub HMS Safari after doing recce in the Gulf of Castellammare, Sicily. It later emerges that both men have been taken prisoner. #NavalHistory
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Informal portrait photo of Richard Fyson with a beard.
🗓️ #OTD 1945 – ahead of ops at Lake Comacchio in Italy, COPP 2's Richard Fyson (📸 'Stealthily by Night') flies to the UK to get 4 Mark VI canoes. With small 2-stroke engines and propellers that can be raised, they're ideal for crossing the big lake. #NavalHistory
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HMS Safari on the surface coming alongside at the submarine base in Portsmouth in September 1943. A number of crewmen are on the casing, and its Jolly Roger flag is being flown.
Ben Bryant on the left, in Commander’s uniform, photographed after he’d left Safari but on the casing of his old submarine after it returned to Portsmouth in September 1943. He is talking with a Lieutenant and a Petty Officer. The barrel of Safari’s deck gun is above them.
🗓️ #OTD in 1943 – COPP's first op since officially forming gets underway as sub Safari (📸 IWM A 19067), commanded by sub legend Ben Bryant (📸 IWM A 19073, on left), leaves Algiers with men from COPP 4. They're heading to recce north-west Sicily. #NavalHistory
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Profile diagram of the bow of an X-5 class X-craft including its battery stowage. The X-20 class was largely unchanged in this respect.
Today's trials suggest it will: standard Admiralty string, they find, neither changes its length nor loses its strength when soaked through.
Further trials slow after 25 February when one of X-20's batteries explodes (✏️ own collection), making the sub temporarily unusable. /🧵
X-23 alongside headquarters ship HMS Largs on D-Day after completing its marking for Sword Beach. Its taut-string reels are circled.
It was only after it was removed that the decision was taken to use dinghies launched from the X-craft on D-Day to provide extra markers. So the COPP teams have designed reels of string that can be played out from the casing (📸 from IWM ADM 1260). But will it work?
Naval vessels like minesweepers often measured distance travelled using taut wire weighted to the sea bed (📸 IWM A 10449). X-craft usually had a small version fitted, but it was previously removed from the COPP boats to allow a gyrocompass repeater to be fitted on the casing.
Sketch diagrams of the taut string reels installed on X-20 and X-23.
🗓️ #OTD in 1944 – COPPs 1 and 9, due to mark Juno and Sword beaches on D-Day, start trials with improvised 'taut string' distance-measuring gear. They'll use it to measure the distance between their X-craft midget subs and additional dinghy markers. (✏️ TNA DEFE 2/1059) #NavalHistory 🧵
A landing craft with its bow ‘beached’ onto a river bank with vegetation all around it and no bank visible. Another landing craft is partially in shot to the left.
Men from COPP 1 aboard a Landing Craft Assault (LCA), likely after leading in the assault, during the landings at Ruywa.
🗓️ #OTD in 1945 – landings take place at Ruywa in Burma (now Myanmar), guided in by a combination of COPP 1 and COPP 4. (📸 IWM SE 1922 and Jack Crane family) #NavalHistory
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George Wood in a jeep, sitting alongside Louis Mountbatten who is at the wheel.
The return is a big security risk. After the first op, COPP 1's officers had gone to a briefing held by Major-General George Wood (📸 left, IWM SE 1824) when he outlined the assault plans. Now they're returning to Japanese-held territory with those plans in their heads. 2/2
Map of the area around Ruywa. The village is on the edge of ‘solid land’ to the east, with mangrove swamps marked to the west. Two beaches are marked on the map, likely ones used during the eventual assault landings.
🗓️ #OTD in 1945 – COPP 1 in Burma (Myanmar) has to return to Ruywa two nights after doing an initial recce with COPP 4. Miscommunication during the briefing for the first op meant they didn't cover all the ground they needed to during the first op. #NavalHistory 1/2
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Denis Mackay photographed on Ramree Island later in 1945, standing with a pipe in his mouth and shrubs and grasses behind him. Beyond that is water and distant land.
🗓️ #OTD in 1945 – a joint team of men from COPP 1 and COPP 4 carries out recce near Ruywa in Burma (Myanmar). The overall team is under the command of COPP 4's Denis Mackay (📸 on Ramree Island, Jack Crane family). #NavalHistory
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X-23 alongside headquarters ship HMS Largs after completing its beach marking operation on D-Day.
🗓️ #OTD in 1944 – midget sub X-23 arrives at sub base HMS Dolphin in Gosport. [At least it did if the target date was achieved!] #NavalHistory
COPP 9, the team that's earmarked to use it for beach recce work, arrived from Scotland about a week ago. (📸IWM ADM 1260)
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