[Mike K]

More comes to light !

A few days before the official German surrender was signed, 299 squadron flew over and landed on a Luftwaffe controlled airfield in Denmark. Jim's Stirling 'EASY AS EVER' can be seen in a photo of the line-up on the German controlled airfield.

I believe Jim also was involved in operation Varsity, the Rhine airborne landings. I will download more of the unit diary.

Jim did many dangerous ops and had some hair raising experiences, engines conking out and flying at low level up Norwegian fjords in the middle of the night with the throttles set at way past the red line. You would think he would have got at least got a DFM or some similar medal, no, all he got was a 'Mention in Despatches' Very sadly, he was damaged by the experiences he went through and he died young.

Looking through the dairy, the squadron did a daylight SOE drop near Brussels to supply the Belgian constabulary. The UK national archive files are free but the process is rather convoluted, you first register as a user by email , then you select the files you are interested in and place it them in the 'out basket' , they then provide you with a download link. The files are in PDF format which is handy.