Library Reference Number: 242
Operation Pharos
The prospect of accepting a senior highly responsible post in the Far East campaign following victory in Europe was a daunting one. The Japanese were well known for their record of fighting to the last man, and for those with experience in this field of conflict, the expectation was that hostilities would continue for several years to come.
Wing Commander Derek Martin was more widely known for his Sunderland flying operations in the Battle of the Atlantic during world war two and also as founder member of the RAF Guinea Pig Club. He was perhaps less well known for his Far East appointment towards the end of the war. Sadly, Derek Martin passed away during the night of 4th April 2014, and we publish the following personal account of his service in the Far East as a mark of respect for Wing Commander Derek Martin’s very long and distinguished career in the Royal Air Force.
In the Spring of 1944 the war in Europe was beginning to turn in the Allies favour. Landings had been made in Italy, and the Russians (now our Allies again) had advanced into Estonia. In the Far East our “Forgotten Army” had stopped the Japanese invasion of India and Imphal and were advancing slowly back into Burma. The thoughts of Whitehall planners turned to redeployment of British military strength from Europe to the Far East.
One of the main factors in the British contribution to the defeat of Japan after the recapture of Burma was to be the awesome Bomber Command which had inflicted so much destruction on Hitler’s Germany. A thousand British bombers (“Tiger Force”) would be deployed to the Pacific to continue their destruction of the enemy. As Bomber Command aircraft were generally designed for operations over Europe, none was of a range suitable for operation over vast distances.
Although highly secret and previously unknown to me, the planners at HQ ACSEA (Air Command, South East Asia) in Delhi during early 1944, decided that a staging post was needed half way across the Indian Ocean. The various small islands in the Indian Ocean were considered and it was decided that the best location would be the Cocos-Keeling Islands. Although only a relatively short distance from Japanese-occupied Sumatra and Java, Cocos is equidistant between Ceylon and Australia, and was a British possession with only a few hundred resident population.
About the middle of 1944 I was running the Navigation School at the Coastal Command OTU (Operational Training Unit) at Silloth in Cumbria. Completely unexpectedly in October 1944 I received a posting to India. I had no idea what I was planned to do there, but imagined that I would end up in the campaign in Burma.
My travel instructions were simple. I had to report to the British Airways terminal opposite Victoria Station ready to go overseas. At the terminal I met up with another officer, a Group Captain, who was also travelling to India on similar instructions to those I had received. Neither of us knew what was in store for us. We travelled in considerable luxury to the flying boat base at Poole, Dorset, and continued to wonder why we were receiving this treatment. At Poole on 2nd December 1944 we embarked on Sunderland flying boat ML727 (Captain Flt Lt Needham – in wartime British Airways flying boats were often flown by RAF pilots if civilian pilots were not available).
The most interesting leg of the flight was along the coast of North Africa to Cairo where we landed on the Nile. Flying over the route of the 1st and 8th Armies when they had driven the Germans out of North Africa, all along the way were signs of war with wrecked tanks, vehicles and aircraft to be seen. Sitting a thousand feet above the wreckage being served a cold chicken salad, I could not help contrasting or surroundings with those of the unfortunates, both British and German who had passed over the route below us. I also could not help recalling the times in the Atlantic when I had flown over survivors in lifeboats, and was thankful that I had not shared their experiences.
I assumed I would be going to Burma and was surprised when the flying boat taking me to the Far East landed at Karachi and the personal pilot of the Commander in Chief ACSEA came on board. He said he had been instructed to fly me to Delhi at once where I was to report to the Command Headquarters. There must have been some urgency to get us there because Headquarters had sent a special aircraft to take the Group Captain and myself from Karachi to Delhi (aircraft Armstrong Whitworth Ensign G-ADJB).
I was obviously expected, with a hotel room booked and an interview at the Headquarters the next day. Supreme Allied Command South East Asia (SACSEA) was the Headquarters from which the war in Burma and the Far East was being conducted. During the long interview we attended a special briefing on the state of the war against the Japanese. We had to familiarise ourselves with exotic places like Kohima, Coxs’s Bazaar, Mandalay and Rangoon which, until then had been to us place names on an atlas. The forward planners in Delhi were thinking about the recapture of Singapore, the pursuit of the Japanese back to Japan and the redeployment of the whole of Bomber Command from Europe to the Far East where they could pound the Japanese into submission. However, vast distances were beyond the capability of bombers designed for Europe.
Already air bases had been built throughout India, but staging posts were required in preparation for ‘Operation Zipper’ attacking Singapore from the south. Plans were ahead for the 14th Army coming down through Malaya from the north, while air support was required to support Force 136, a covert operation behind the enemy lines in Malaya. (see Library Index No.56).
To implement ‘Operation Pharos’ it was planned to construct an airfield on a small coral island off the coast of Java, and after a further long briefing on the situation in the Far East I was informed that I had been selected to be Chief of Staff (i.e. second in command) of the force which was being assembled to occupy the Cocos Islands. The Commander was to be Air Commodore Hunt, an Australian serving in the Royal Air Force.
The first task was to write the Top Secret plan for the operation. The most important part of the plan was to maintain absolute secrecy. We were proposing to sail 1,500 miles unescorted across the Japanese dominated Indian Ocean, with seven Japanese battleships in Singapore, as a powerful Japanese fleet had been moved from the Pacific to Singapore.
This was likely to be the biggest job I had ever been given. Responsibility for 10,000 men and all construction equipment necessary to set up a fully operational air base on a small remote island in the Indian Ocean. The mixed force of British and Indian Army, naval forces, air forces and the RAF Rescue launches all had to be assembled in India and prepared for embarkation at Bombay Docks ready for sailing first to Colombo and thence 1,500 miles unescorted across the Indian Ocean to the Cocos islands – a dot in the Ocean and uncomfortably close to the Japanese front line.
During preparation in India we had our own communication aircraft – a Beechcraft with pilot and crew for numerous trips around India making final arrangements. By March 1945 all was ready. The convoy took two weeks to load at Bombay Docks. We had a security officer and staff whose sole job was to maintain secrecy. The official term for the exercise was named “Operation Pharos” after the great light in the classical eastern Mediterranean. It was also called “129 Staging Post” or “SHQ Brown”
The convoy arrived at Cocos on 20th March 1945, the next plan was to get ashore and build the air base before the Japanese reacted. Unfortunately heavy seas were running and we could not launch the main landing craft for a couple of days. As we began to put the main force ashore, I reflected that we had until 1st June to build an airfield capable of handling Liberators and, later, Lancasters and Halifaxes of the UK main bomber force.
The plan was that after landing on the island, we would first get the Anti Aircraft battery ashore and working. The next priority was to build an airstrip sufficient for 136 Squadron Spitfires to operate. At the same time the Spitfire aircraft (in crates landed on the beach) had to be transported seven miles through jungle – then assembled under palm trees. During this initial period 24 hour watch had to be maintained looking for enemy landing parties.
Work started on the airstrip around 7th April 1945. By 20th April we had built a strip capable of launching the newly assembled Spitfires of No.136 Squadron which we had brought in crates. We now felt slightly safer now that the anti-aircraft battery and Spitfires were now all fully operational.
On 28th May we accepted our first Liberator and the island was becoming a vast base with fuel storage tanks, a light railway, aircraft servicing facilities and large storage dumps. We had met the deadline and the Allied Air Commander-in-Chief Sir Keith Park carried out an inspection and later signalled “You and your team have created the best organised base I have seen in any overseas theatre in this war.”
On reflection I sometimes wonder how we got away with this operation carried out more than 1,000 miles ahead of the front line in Burma and across the Indian Ocean dominated by seven enemy battleships stationed in nearby Singapore.
My job of creating the base was finished and on 24th July 1945, soon after my 25th birthday I took the weekly Catalina JX587 from Cocos to Koggala, Ceylon, en route for the staff college in Palestine.
Footnote:
Aircraft based at Cocos included No.136 Squadron Spitfires; No.684 Squadron Mosquitos; Nos.99, 356 and 321 (Netherland) Liberator Squadrons. Also Detachments from 160 & 203 Liberator Squadrons. During the final stages of the war the Liberator Squadrons were in action attacking Japanese airfields and shipping which would never have been possible without the newly built airfield at Cocos. At the end of hostilities Liberators were able to drop supplies to Allied prisoners-of-war, and eventually perform evacuation flights for those prisoners.
The problem of even finding Cocos Island as a dot in the ocean was considerable. Dan Brooks in “Flying with No.356 Squadron” (Index No. 210) tells of missing out on his former pilot’s posting to Cocos. This was just as well, for the 20-year old Canadian pilot F/O R H McLeod set off with his Liberator crew on 18th August 1945. They couldn’t find the small island and running out of fuel all perished at sea. Their names are inscribed on the Singapore Memorial.
With the Japanese long-held tradition of no-surrender and fighting to the last man, the stage was now set for a very lengthy battle spanning many hundreds of miles of land, air and ocean warfare. The expectation of a colossal loss of life was imminent now that Cocos Island was fully operational and ready to accept an even larger bomber force intent on long-range missions from that newly established base.
Mercifully, hostilities unexpectedly ended on 15th August 1945 and Cocos as an air base was no longer required.
The last 99 Squadron Liberator to leave Cocos was KN751 flown by Squadron CO Wg Cdr Webster. This aircraft after serving several post-war years with the Indian Air Force, was brought back from India to the UK by Wg Cdr Doug Connor (see Index No.41) and although initially installed at Cosford Air Museum, was later transferred to RAF Museum, Hendon, where it can be seen to this day. After the war, Brown's West Island airfield was rebuilt into the current dual use airport on West Island, Cocos.
Jack Burgess (Editor, ex-160 Squadron RAF, South East Asia Command)