Wartime training exercise that saw seven paras die was covered up.

Former journalist takes the lid off a wartime cover-up that was witnessed by his mother

A former journalist has thanked Courier readers for helping him solve the mystery of a wartime parachute tragedy “cover up” that happened on the River Tay 80 years ago today.

Michael Mulford, 71, a Dundee-raised former Courier and STV reporter who finished his career as RAF public relations officer for Scotland, said an appeal through this newspaper’s Craigie column had helped him trace information about the drowning of seven fully-laden paratroopers who were dropped to their deaths during an exercise over Wormit Bay.

The men, training for the D-Day landings a year later, were supposed to be dropped 10 miles to the east at Tentsmuir as part of a top-secret exercise to see if paratroopers could be dropped into a tight space.

However, for reasons unknown, two of the 10 converted Whitley bombers that had flown from Salisbury Plain carrying 130 troops veered around the coast towards Wormit and offloaded their men from an altitude of 800 feet into around 30 feet of water west of the Tay Rail Bridge.

The second aircraft over Wormit contained nine men from the 8th (Midlands) Battalion of the Parachute Regiment. Seven drowned, one refused to jump after seeing his colleagues’ fate and was court-martialled. The ninth, Regimental Sergeant Major Alan Pearson, landed on a narrow sandbank and made it ashore.

Another paratrooper died at Tentsmuir when he was struck during the jump by an ammunition box. Many others were injured.

Michael’s interest in the events of June 13, 1943, was sparked by his late mother Anna Mulford telling him over the years how she disbelievingly witnessed the whole episode as she stood on the beach at Wormit Bay while heavily pregnant.

Michael, of Cupar, said: “As a Royal Navy wife my mother knew that for many of the soldiers, if not indeed all of them, their last moments in this world would be the dreadful realisation that their circular parachutes had no control and that the only way from 800 feet was down to a watery grave.”

The rescue operation involved RAF Air-Sea rescue launches and the RNLI lifeboat from Broughty Ferry across the river east of Dundee.

A Polish officer who arrived told Michael’s mum “They are all ok.” However, she knew it could not be true. In fact, he was reporting correctly that 10 Polish troops had landed in the shallows and made it ashore.

When Michael started training as a reporter on The Courier in the mid1960s, his mum implored him to ask the senior reporters who were on the paper in 1943 what had really happened.

However, they said they had never heard of anything of the sort.

The dreadful realisation that their circular parachutes had no control

paratroopers should have landed

Anna Mulford