MISSION: Find Penny, the lost love of hero of Stalag Luft III
Historian’s bid to track down smiling woman in poignant keepsake of Scots Spitf ire pilot murdered by Gestapo
IT was just a small photograph – but, behind the barbed wire of Nazi prison camp Stalag Luft III, it would have been a treasured reminder of past happiness. No doubt the smile of the young woman in the picture also gave captured Spitfire pilot Alastair ‘Sandy’ Gunn some hope for better times ahead. Sadly, it was not to be. Months after receiving the photo, the hero Scot was dead – murdered by the Gestapo for his part in the breakout immortalised in the movie The Great Escape. He was only 24.
Military historian Tony Hoskins has, after years of painstaking research, pieced together most of the details of Flight Lieutenant Gunn’s short life but now wants to solve one last mystery – the true identity of ‘Penny’, the young woman in the photograph.
Identifying her 77 years after it was taken – with Penny almost certainly a nickname – will be difficult but Mr Hoskins has already managed to track down the wreckage of Flt Lt Gunn’s Spitfire, number AA810, which was found on a Norwegian mountainside.
In an astonishing labour of love, he retrieved the rare aircraft piece by piece and transported it back to the UK, where he is now overseeing its reconstruction, with the aim of getting it airborne again in 2023.
Mr Hoskins, 37, said: ‘Receiving this picture would have meant a great deal to Sandy. The tide of the war hadn’t – as far as Sandy inside the camp was concerned – yet turned in favour of the Allies.
‘Potentially he was hoping things would pick up, one way or the other, and he’d be able to get home to this young lady. Maybe it was his only hope at that time. They clearly meant something to one another. It would be fantastic to find out more. It just takes one person to recognise Penny and come forward.’
Originally from Auchterarder, Perthshire, Flt Lt Gunn’s exceptional navigational skills saw him join the Photographic Reconnaissance Unit (PRU) during the Second World War.
The unit’s main base was at RAF Benson in Oxfordshire, with others at St Eval in Cornwall; Wick, Caithness,
and Lossiemouth, Moray. PRU spy planes were highly modified versions of the original Spitfire, with guns, armour and communications replaced with fuel tanks and cameras – leaving the young pilots with no protection, weapons or communication.
Flt Lt Gunn spent four months operating from RAF Benson before he was dispatched to Wick for a special mission – to photograph the German navy’s feared battleship Tirpitz, which was sheltering in a Norwegian fjord.
On March 5, 1942, he took off for Trondheim, but his aircraft was detected and two German fighter planes were waiting.
Mr Hoskins, who lives near Lewes in Sussex, said: ‘Sandy didn’t stand a chance. Nearly 200 bullets struck his Spitfire passing through the cockpit, through the wings and through his oil system.’
The end came when a shell hit one of Sandy’s long-range fuel tanks.
Mr Hoskins said: ‘His Spitfire was instantly on fire and realising his flight was over, he slid back the canopy and jumped for his life.’
Sandy’s plane came down in the Trollheimen mountains, where it lay until recovered by Mr Hoskins in 2018. Flt Lt Gunn was captured and interrogated for nearly a month before being sent to Stalag Luft III, which was near Sagan in modern-day Poland. He joined the daring team of tunnellers who escaped on the night of March 24, 1944. However he was recaptured and executed on April 6.
AMONG the items returned to his family was the photo of Penny, measuring three-anda-half inches by twoand-a-half. Following extensive research Mr Hoskins believes Sandy and Penny probably met in Wick in February 1942.
He said: ‘Penny is obviously in the military and at the time of sending the photo appears to be in either a Middle East, Far East or Mediterranean theatre of operations.
‘Sandy received a batch of mail in January 1944 which means that she must have sent that photo around August or September 1943.’
Further research is difficult just now because the National Archives, which holds war records, is shut due to the pandemic. However, Mr Hoskins believes Penny was a nickname as no one named Penelope seems to have served where the photo is thought to have been taken.
He said: ‘This photograph, which would have been accompanied by a letter, although that is missing, arrived in January 1944, so they were still conversing almost two years after he was shot down.
‘Did she receive a final letter from him? Did she ever know why he never came home or why she never heard from him again? If Penny is still with us today she would be at least 97.
‘It’s limited information to go on, but can we find Penny?’
Flt Lt Gunn’s nephew Alastair Gunn, who is named after his uncle, said: ‘I don’t think that my grandparents or my father ever got over what happened to Alastair. He paid the ultimate sacrifice and he was only 24.
‘My father only spoke about Alastair in happier times. I know that my father was immensely proud of his brother and found his loss very hard to bear.
‘It is fantastic that AA810 has been recovered and is all down to Tony’s immense efforts. It will be a great day when AA810 returns to the air. It will be a lasting memorial to all the unsung PRU pilots and personnel who worked during the Second World War.
‘Hopefully someone might recognise Penny and come forward.’
Did she ever know why she never heard from him again?