The Last Mission of Flying Officer Harry V. Smith
On the 29th of May, 1945, twelve days after his 21st birthday, Flying Officer Harry Vincent Smith of Winnipeg lifted a stripped-down B-24 Liberator off a runway in Bengal for the 25th and final mission of his tour. He was carrying four American OSS agents into occupied Siam. He never reached the drop zone.
In this episode, I tell the story of my first cousin twice removed: a prairie kid who enlisted the day after his 18th birthday, earned his wings on the Saskatchewan prairie, and flew some of the longest and loneliest sorties of the Second World War with No. 358 Squadron RAF; the secret special-duties unit that lost 24 of its 28 original crews in six months and never made the newspapers.
Shot down by nine Japanese fighters over the Siamese jungle, Harry crash-landed his burning Liberator using a Canadian bush pilot’s trick, stayed behind with a dying man while his survivors escaped. Harry was then passed hand to hand across 400 kilometres of occupied country by the Free Thai underground; villagers, policemen, doctors, a bus driver with nerves of steel, and a Regent who hid Allied airmen in his own palace.
Drawing on Harry’s 388-page RCAF service file, his co-written memoir Escape From Siam, and the family history that carried the story down to my own kitchen table, this episode follows one telegram from Winnipeg’s Furby Street into the jungle and back, and asks what it means that a family can receive two “missing” telegrams, twenty-nine years apart, with two very different endings.
Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC)
Period:Second World War (1939-1945)Rank:Flying OfficerUnit:No. 358 Squadron, Royal Air ForceAwarded on:August 14th, 1945
““Flying Officer Smith completed much operational flying. He has displayed a high degree of skill and courage qualities which were well illustrated on one occasion in May 1945, when during a sortie his aircraft was attacked by nine enemy fighters. Although the aircraft was severely damaged and one engine put out of action in the first attack this captain and his crew fought with great resolution. The enemy pressed home further attacks with great persistence and Flying Officer Smith’s aircraft sustained further damage. Two more engines were put out of action and three members of his crew were killed. Even so Flying Officer Smith though wounded, successfully crash landed the crippled aircraft thus saving the lives of the remaining members of his crew. In the face of great odds this officer set a fine example of coolness and bravery.”
Croix de Guerre (1939-1945)
Period:Second World War (1939-1945)Rank:Flying OfficerUnit:No. 358 Squadron, Royal Air ForceAwarded on:November 2nd, 1945
Citation:
“For exceptional services rendered in war time in the course of operations leading to the liberation of France.”
With silver star. For Operation Mouche.
Pilot’s Flying Badge
Period:Second World War (1939-1945)
The episode also features archival interview audio from two other Canadian Burma veterans, Frederick Sproule and Charles “Dick” Sharpe, whose own voices frame the wider air war Harry served in.
Sources & further reading:
Harry V. Smith et al., Escape From Siam (family memoir); RCAF service file of F/O H.V. Smith, DFC (Library and Archives Canada); Greenhous, Harris, Johnston & Rawling, The Crucible of War 1939–1945 (RCAF official history, Vol. III); Tim Cook, The Necessary War and Fight to the Finish; Richard Aldrich, The Faraway War. Veteran interview audio courtesy of Veterans Affairs Canada. The four crew members lost on 29 May 1945 rest at Kanchanaburi War Cemetery, Thailand.
Dedicated to Harry V. Smith and the crew of “P” for Peter: Bob Poole, “Lofty” Brenchley, Jack Draper, Bill Pinckney, Cyril “Curly” Copley, “Timber” Woods, “Ramsay” Roe, and Bill Pugh; and to Cpl. Naparolski, USAAF/OSS, who did not come home.
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