Flt Lt Tom Maxwell
Gunner who was shot down over France and escaped to Spain
FLIGHT LIEUTENANT TOM MAXWELL, who has died aged 94, was still a teenager when his Lancaster was shot down over northern France. He baled out, and with the help of the French escape lines he evaded capture and reached Spain after crossing the Pyrenees.
Born in Belfast on June 19 1924, Thomas John Maxwell was educated at Mount Pottinger School in the city before enlisting in the RAF when he was 17. He trained as an air gunner, then joined 622 Squadron at RAF Mildenhall.
He attacked Berlin and dropped mines around the Frisian Islands. On the night of March 15 1944 his crew were tasked to bomb Stuttgart – it was their sixth operation and Maxwell was in the rear turret of the Lancaster.
After successfully dropping their bombs, the crew turned for home but very soon after, their bomber was hit by flak and badly damaged. East of Rouen, a fire intensified and the crew baled out. Five were soon captured.
Maxwell landed in a field and for the next 10 days he was sheltered by a farmer and his wife before he was taken to Paris, where a priest looked after him. Like all Bomber Command crews, he was carrying a set of “passport” photographs and one was used to provide him with a forged identity card.
He was moved to a desolate and extremely poor farm, where he joined two US airmen. A young girl then escorted them to the railway station, where they were joined by three more Americans and a courier. They travelled by train to Toulouse and on to Pau.
Taken by bus and taxi to the foothills of the Pyrenees, he joined a larger group of British and American evaders and guides took them over the snow-capped mountains into Spain, where they were arrested by the Spanish police. After a week of house arrest, where he met two other members of his crew, they were picked up by the British consul and were eventually taken to Gibraltar. Maxwell was flown back to the UK on May 22.
He rejoined 622 Squadron and immediately tracked down the WAAF who had packed his parachute, to thank her for saving his life.
Over the next few months he completed another 26 operations including one to Heinsberg, a town he visited many years later when he was serving at RAF Wildenrath. He was commissioned, and in December was awarded the DFC for “his skill, courage and fortitude”.
During early May 1945 he flew on Operation Manna, the airdrop of food to the starving Dutch population. At the end of the war he was serving in India before leaving to be a teacher.
In 1952 he rejoined the RAF as an air traffic controller and served in Northern Ireland, Germany and in Libya. After three years at El Adem, near Tobruk, he and his family drove across North Africa and into Spain and France before reaching Marham in Norfolk in a Volkswagen Beetle with a roof rack, an unprecedented road journey at the time.
He retired from the RAF in 1978 before spending 10 years with the Sultan of Oman’s Air Force.
After retiring, Maxwell worked tirelessly with supporters to get a Bomber Command campaign medal, but he had to settle for a clasp to his 1939-45 Star.
He was a strong supporter of the Bomber Command Association and the Mildenhall Register and attended the commemoration of the Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park.
In 2016 he was appointed to the Légion d’honneur by the French government in recognition of his service during the liberation of France.
Tom Maxwell married Katherine Tennant in 1948. She predeceased him, and he is survived by their two sons.