Top navigator had a string of adventures with fabled Long RangeDesert Group
Mike ‘‘Lofty’’ Carr, who has died aged 101, was one of the top navigators in the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG); he worked with the SAS on navigation and took part in many raids in North Africa deep behind enemy lines.
On the night of September 15, 1942, Carr, equipped with a Vickers Kmachinegun, navigated amixed force of LRDG and a detachment of the Sudan Defence Force (SDF) towards the Italian-held fort at Jalo.
Jalo was a desert oasis about 400km south of the Mediterranean port of Benghazi on the Libyan coast. In the buildup to General Montgomery’s major offensive at
El Alamein, capture of the fort would provide the
SAS with a strategic base from which to launch hit-and-run raids on the enemy lines of communication.
Ten kilometres from the village, the force dismounted from their vehicles and formed three columns. Carr led them forward for more than an hour in pitch darkness. They had gone only a few yards when they came under a hail of small-arms fire from the fort. Most of the SDF fled, pursued by their officers.
Carr tried to fight his way through to the left column, which was engaging defenders inside the fort, but the opposition, equipped with rifles and hand grenades, was too strong. Firing long bursts from his gun he covered the withdrawal until his gun jammed.
At first light, having hid in awell, he crept through the village and hid in a hen coop. When the owner emerged from his house Carr managed to make him understand he needed a camel to make good his escape. The villager disappeared – only to return with German soldiers. Carr dived into a heap of straw, but when the Germans started prodding it with bayonets, he gave himself up.
Stuart Michael Carr was born at Frome, Somerset, and came from a family of AngloIrish soldiers. His father managed a brewery. At school Carr had a passion for astronomy and would have become a surveyor but for the outbreak of war.
In 1939, he enlisted in the Staffordshire Yeomanry TA and swiftly gained a reputation as an accomplished navigator. In 1940, he was a trooper working in the stables when Major (later Brigadier) Ralph Bagnold, the pioneer in desert exploration, heard about Carr’s rare skills and ordered his release from his unit.
In June 1940, Italy declared war on Britain and France. A large Italian garrison was stationed at Kufra in southeast Libya, and served as an air base for Italian East Africa. Bagnold’s proposed that a Long Range Patrol be established, for reconnaissance and to find out what the Italians were up to.
The men, mostly New Zealanders at this stage, were selected for intelligence, selfreliance, resourcefulness, resilience and the ability to live in close proximity with each other. With his specialist skills, Carr became an important figure in the unit, soon renamed the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG). It quickly expanded into two squadrons, each with three patrols. Their modified Chevrolet trucks were equipped with Bofors guns, antitank rifles and Lewis guns.
Early in 1941, Y Patrol of the LDRG was formed out of volunteers from Yeomanry regiments. Carr was quickly recruited.
In the summer of 1941, Bagnold relinquished command of the LRDG, but took Carr on missions as his driver and navigator. The two men crossed the desert to Kharga, about 600km south of Cairo. The town was a hotbed of espionage and Bagnold had many contacts there among headmen of the Senussi people, desert nomads. Ill-treated by the Italians, they were a valuable source of information for the British.
Later that year, Y Patrol was split into two units, Y1 and Y2, each comprising 15 men and five trucks. Captain (later Colonel) Frank Simms in command of Y1 Patrol, selected Carr as his navigator. Y1 Patrol was ordered to undertake a reconnaissance mission deep into enemy territory to Marada, about 100km south of El Agheila, Libya, where a radar direction-finding station, detecting allied shipping in the Mediterranean, had to be destroyed.
Carr had the task of navigating the threevehicle patrol. After Carr pinpointed the position of the radar station, Simms and a comrade decided to do a recce of the fort. Two German trucks appeared, and the two men made a run for it, but Simms was shot in the thigh and both were taken prisoner.
Separated from Simms, Carr, who had orders to lead the patrol to safety if his CO was captured or killed, drove through the night, covering almost 480km. In daylight hours they hid from the eyes of enemy fighter pilots.
Meanwhile, the embryonic Special Air Service – after a disastrous first mission involving a parachute drop in 1941 during the North African Campaign – had switched from parachuting as ameans of infiltration to using the LRDG as their ‘‘Libyan Taxi Service’’.
In the first six months of 1942, with the support of LRDG’s ‘‘taxi service’’, the SAS raided every important German and Italian aerodrome within 500km of the forward area and destroyed more than 140 aircraft.
After Carr’s capture at Jalo, he was sent to a PoW camp in Italy, but after the Italian capitulation in September 1943, the Germans beganmoving PoWs north, and he made his escape from captivity in Poland. He walked several hundred miles southwest, subsisting mostly on carrots from farms and navigating by the stars. After two months, Carr was ready to drop from malnutrition when a farmer told him that there were American soldiers in a church two fields away. In the spring of 1945 he was flown back to England.
For many years Carr worked as a surveyor and valuer, but in the 1960s, having graduated from teacher-training college, he taught art until he retired. He was an accomplished artist as well as awoodcarver and potter.
Lofty Carr married first, in 1946, Anthea Harber. The marriage was dissolved and their two children predeceased him. In 1959 he married Barbara Leese, a school teacher, who survives him.
Carr dived into a heap of straw, but when the Germans
started prodding it with bayonets, he gave himself up.