Issue No 21 THE AVIATION HISTORIAN 39
available, both pilots were blamed for failing
to identify the Liberator as a friendly aircraft
before opening fire, and courts martial were
recommended. However, it was later decided
that there was insufficient evidence to proceed.
The Inquiry report stated the following:
“The cause of the accident was, in our opinion,
the failure of Flt Sgt Brzeski [RIGHT] and Sgt
Malinowski to identify AM918 as a friendly
aircraft, resulting in their jointly shooting down
the said aircraft. The weather and visibility at the
place and time of the interception were such that
no excuse on these grounds can be accepted.”
Brzeski — at the time of the incident an ace
with five kills and two shared, with more to
come — was commissioned not long afterwards,
and Malinowski was promoted Flight Sergeant.
Brzeski was shot down and became a prisoner
of war in May 1945, returning to the UK after
the war and remaining in the RAF. Malinowski
returned to Poland after the war and helped set
up the nation’s air emergency medical service
during the 1950s. Blame was also laid at the
door of No 10 Group, which, according to the
subsequent report,”failed to notify [its] fighter
sectors that a friendly aircraft was expected
through [its] territory, yet [had been] warned by
No 44 Group and conversed with that Group on
the supposition that the unidentified aircraft was
the Liberator.”
The two Spitfires involved lasted only another
month. Both flew on Roadstead 12, a low-level
attack on enemy shipping, on March 15, 1942,
the pair making forced landings near Bolt Head
ONE OF THE passengers aboard G-AGDR, 41-year-old Lt-Col Townsend
“Tim” Griffiss (RIGHT), became the first USAAF officer to be killed in
Europe after America entered the war. The scion of a wealthy family, Griffiss
(incorrectly named in the BOAC loading list as Griffiths) was a former fighter
pilot and one of the first American officers sent to London in 1941, as an
aide to Gen James Chaney as a “special observer” — officially neutral, but
in reality preparing the ground for the military alliance that would become
public after Pearl Harbor. Arriving in Europe in 1935, Griffiss spent most of
his time during 1936–38 observing the civil war in Spain at close quarters
as the USA’s Assistant Military Air Attaché in Paris, Berlin and Spain.
In November 1941 Griffiss was detached from Chaney’s staff and sent
to Moscow to negotiate with the Soviet government about the opening of
an Alaska—Siberia (ALSIB) air route for American Lend-Lease aircraft.
He spent about two months in the Soviet Union, first in Moscow, then,
when German forces reached the outskirts of the city, in Kuibyshev (now
Samara), the temporary wartime capital. Cold weather delayed Griffiss’s
departure, and from Kuibyshev he went to Tehran in Iran, and from there to
Cairo, where he boarded Liberator G-AGDR.
After the enquiry released its findings, Gen Chaney wrote to the US Army Adjutant General with the findings,
requesting that “no publicity be given to findings of [the] Court of Inquiry. Formal certificate of death will be
forwarded as soon as issued by British Casualty Section. Request this information be furnished also Chief of
Army Air Forces”. Griffiss received the Distinguished Service Medal posthumously for his work in London and
in the Soviet Union. The citation stated that he displayed rare judgment and devotion to duty and contributed
materially to the successful operation of the Special Army Observers Group in London. A corner of Bushy Park
in West London offers the faintest of reminders. Here, half covered over by grass, are a handful of tablets in the
earth, marking the various blocks of Camp Griffiss, the British headquarters of the USAAF, established in the
summer of 1942. BLlt-col townsend “tim” griffiss
after running out of fuel. Both were written off.
The Hurn—Cairo—Hurn service did not
continue, Liberators not returning to the route
until July 1942 when they carried emergency
ammunition supplies for the beleagured British
forces in North Africa. [See Ray Flude’s Some
Supreme Effort in TAH10 — Ed.]
A postscript to G-AGDR’s tragic loss emerged
in 1995 in the probate of the will of Miss Margaret
Gill of Walton-on-the-Hill. She left £400,000 to
the Wells-next-the-Sea Lifeboat Station in
Norfolk as a tribute to the copilot of G-AGDR,
John Hunter — who had taught her to fly
before the war — as someone lost at sea.ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The Editor would like to thank
the late John Havers, Wojtek Matusiak and Adam
Jackowski for their invaluable research and assistance
during the preparation of this articleTAHWOJTEK MATUSIAK COLLECTION