The Mosquito pilot who silenced Hermann Goering
As a radio announcer presented Hermann Goering to the German nation at a rally in Berlin in 1943, a ripple of explosions sounded in the distance. An audacious attack by the RAF was under way.
A small force of light bombers had begun dropping 500lb bombs on a nearby radio building, which was to transmit a speech by Goering to mark the 10th anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. The broadcast was cut before he could speak.
The raid, which laid waste to Goering’s claim that the fatherland was safe from allied attack, was led by Wing Commander Reginald Reynolds. His force of four wooden Mosquitos had travelled more than 800km from Britain with the sole aim of silencing the Luftwaffe chief.
The medals earned by Reynolds for that sortie and other raids throughout the World War II are to be auctioned in London. David Erskine-Hill, of auctioneers Dix Noonan Webb, said that the airman’s headline-making career was ‘‘remarkable’’.
‘‘He established himself as one of the most celebrated Mosquito pilots of the war.’’
In May 1943 the airman led a raid on Jena during which he came within inches of an early demise, one shell splinter tearing the collar of his battledress.
Another of his medals was awarded for leading a successful strike on the Gestapo headquarters in Denmark. The attack was carried out at such a low level that one Mosquito left its tail-wheel embedded in a roof top, Erskine-Hill said. Some 240 died in the raid.
According to the auctioneers, fewer than 30 crews were awarded the combination of a Dis- tinguished Service Order and Bar, and Distinguished Flying Cross and Bar in World War II.
The medals are being sold on Wednesday by a private collector who bought them from the airman’s family.
The estimate is £40,000 (NZ$81,400).
The raid on the Berlin rally took the Mosquitos at wave-height across the North Sea and then tree-height over land to avoid detection. The bombers rose to 25,000ft as they crossed the Elbe before releasing their payloads. On their return to Britain, Reynolds and his navigator Air Commodore Ted Sismore, one of the RAF’s most decorated, were played a recording of the broadcast.
Reynolds was 18 when he joined the RAF in 1937. He is thought to have emigrated to Canada and was reported to be alive in 2010.
Sismore died in 2012 aged 91. His family sold his medals for £75,000 earlier this year. The pair made about 90 Mosquito sorties together.